"Examining the organization of everyday life inside the regiments of the French Foreign Legion, this book takes its theoretical point of departure in the notion of the voluntary total organization; that is to say, an institution that constitutes a geographically delimited place of residence and work in which inmates are voluntarily separated from the outside world, leading an enclosed, formally administered life. Informed by a modified version of Goffman's original concept of the total organization, A Sociology of the Total Organization : Atomistic Unity in the French Foreign Legion sociologically untangles the Foreign Legion and the ways in which different kinds of social orders interplay there"--Provided by publisher.