Parachuting

Abstract

The unusual social aspects of parachuting provide a rich potential for sociological study. Within a few moments, the highly integrated collectivity that has dominated its individual members (prejump phase) changes drastically into a tenuous, anomic social situation that gives rise to a very egocentric individuality followed by a return to the former state (postjump phase). This bipolarity of parachuting provides a rare opportunity to study a nearly ideal-typical manifestation of extreme opposite social forms contained within a organizational setting. The sequence of the three phases of the jump, and the dialectical relationship among them, is analyzed here in terms of personal regression leading to social regression, and vice versa. The ambivalence of these relatioships becomes evident in the functional analysis of parachuting's radical implications for individuals as well as for the group and the larger (military) organization.