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This accessible handbook is the first of its kind to examine the sociological approach to the study of the military. The contents are compiled from the work of researchers at universities around the world, as well as military officers devoted to the sector of study. Beginning with a review of studies prior to contemporary research, the book provides a comprehensive survey of the topic. The scope of coverage extends to civic-military relations, including issues surrounding democratic control of the armed forces; military culture; professional training; conditions and problems of minorities in the armed forces; an examination of structural change within the military over the years including new duties and functions following the Cold War.
This book examines the connection between sociology and the challenges faced by the modern military. Military sociology has received little attention in the broader academic world, and is mostly focused on civil-military relations. This book seeks to address this gap and combines ideas, theories and insights from sociology’s founding authors, with each chapter focusing on a specific thinker. There are chapters on Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Jane Addams, W. E. B. Du Bois, Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, Morris Janowitz, Norbert Elias, Cornelis Lammers, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Cynthia Enloe and Bruno Latour, and each essay discusses their ideas and theories in relation to topics that are of concern in and around the military today. Military studies are taken in a broad sense here, so the volume encompasses a wide range of issues, including civil-military relations, military-political affairs, performance and outcomes of military operations, and organizational arrangements including technology and the composition, performance and well-being of personnel. The book intends to provide views and insights that will help the military to innovate their organizations and practices, not necessarily in the usual functional way of innovating (i.e. faster, more precise, etc.) but in a broader way. This book will be of great interest to students of sociology, military studies, civil-military relations, war and conflict studies, and IR in general.
Several contributions in this volume focus on the modern Middle East, with other articles examining justifications for war, the return of war veterans, white nationalists, and the activities of the Moral Majority. Maria Markantonatou addresses the blurring of distinctions between civilians and combatants. Udi Lebel investigates how the IDF is being changed by the increasing number of religious-Zionists recruited. Orlee Hauser argues that the experiences of women in the IDF vary depending on their positions and assignments. Bruce McDonald compares the performance of the Feder-Ram and augmented Solow models in accounting for economic growth in Iran. Neema Noori examines the interrelationship of war, the state, and mobilization in Iran. Molly Clever examines the justifications for war employed by both state and non-state actors. Christina Knopf uses relational dialectics to examine US veteran transitions. David Bugg and Dianne Dentice analyze attitudes and perceptions of white nationalists. Finally, Aaron Davis considers the rise of the Illinois state chapter of the Moral Majority in the 1980s. This volume in the Political and Military Sociology series also includes reviews of important new books in civil-military relations, political science, and military sociology.
Researching the Military focuses on the experiences of researchers who study the military around the world. It explores the historical, social, institutional and personal factors that frame research and scrutinize the way knowledge in this area impacts society and policy. More than merely analyzing research experiences (yet necessarily including them), it is also about the experiences of researchers, their position with regard to the object of their studies, the institutional context where they work and the way their research impacts the academic and policy-making fields in the respective countries. The common theme to the various chapters is reflexivity, a conscious effort at addressing the conditions of research and the position of the researcher and the research participants in that interface. By collecting diverse experiences of researchers from across the world, this volume aims to enhance reflexivity in the field of military studies and to encourage the exchange of knowledge between the academic field and the military arena. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, research methods, sociology, social anthropology and security studies, in general.
The United States has been involved in many wars, sometimes for noble causes like defeating Nazism, and, at other times, it has compromised its own ideals, leading to a lot of soul searching and regrets. Some wars are celebrated as glorious achievements (World War II), some are ‘forgotten’ (Korea), and some are ‘ignored’ (Afghanistan). The current wars in the Middle East represent a complex interplay of motivations, challenges, and threats to America’s role as the world’s democratic leadership. In the case of Afghanistan, we find that during the Cold War the US defense and intelligence apparatus directly and indirectly created an incalculable number of radical extremists that have now turned their sights on their former benefactor. The invasion of Iraq represents a different calculus: under the multitude of rationalizations rests a simple political-economic case of a master nation punishing a disobedient subject. In this brief book, America’s relationship with war is explored with an eye toward changes in capitalism from industrialism to post-industrialism, America’s involvement in the Cold War, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, torture, culture, and ideology. The goal of this new, unique Series is to offer readable, teachable "thinking frames" on today’s social problems and social issues by leading scholars, all in short 60 page or shorter formats, and available for view on http://routledge.customgateway.com/routledge-social-issues.html For instructors teaching a wide range of courses in the social sciences, the Routledge Social Issues Collection now offers the best of both worlds: originally written short texts that provide "overviews" to important social issues as well as teachable excerpts from larger works previously published by Routledge and other presses.
This book, first published in 1985, is the first full-length study of the Soviet Armed Forces as a social institution. Using military manpower as a substantive focus, it identifies those characteristics that the Soviet military shared with counterparts in non-communist systems and those that were unique to the society and political culture in which it was embedded. The discussion encompasses defence policy-making as a whole and focuses on conscription policy, the characteristics of the professional military, the role of the political officer, the mechanics of political socialization within the Red Army, and the experience of ethnic minorities in the armed forces. This analysis provides a window through which we can observe the broader military system at work; how that system affects, and in turn is affected by, the economic, social and political life of the Soviet Union. It contributes to our understanding of civil-military relations in communist systems and to our knowledge of Soviet political and social trends.
This edition brings together military sociologists from eight countries to discuss and illustrate new directions for military sociology. As the roles and even the meaning of the armed forces are evolving rapidly, the authors present alternate ways of looking at key social issues and assumptions about armed forces and society. The chapters examine the foundations of military sociology and elucidate the potential contributions of interpretative sociology and allied approaches to the study of military affairs. This collection is intended primarily for academic researchers and students of military affairs, in both civilian and military institutions. Researchers will find a wide array of tools and perspectives that can be used in dealing with the challenges that face the armed forces and society. The text offers several pedagological features such as learning objectives, key terms and concepts, study questions, and other resources that undergraduates, as well as graduate students and their teachers, will find most helpful.
The Politics of Military Force examines the dynamics of discursive change that made participation in military operations possible against the background of German antimilitarist culture. Once considered a strict taboo, so-called out-of-area operations have now become widely considered by German policymakers to be without alternative. The book argues that an understanding of how certain policies are made possible (in this case, military operations abroad and force transformation), one needs to focus on processes of discursive change that result in different policy options appearing rational, appropriate, feasible, or even self-evident. Drawing on Essex School discourse theory, the book develops a theoretical framework to understand how discursive change works, and elaborates on how discursive change makes once unthinkable policy options not only acceptable but even without alternative. Based on a detailed discourse analysis of more than 25 years of German parliamentary debates, The Politics of Military Force provides an explanation for: (1) the emergence of a new hegemonic discourse in German security policy after the end of the Cold War (discursive change), (2) the rearticulation of German antimilitarism in the process (ideational change/norm erosion) and (3) the resulting making-possible of military operations and force transformation (policy change). In doing so, the book also demonstrates the added value of a poststructuralist approach compared to the naive realism and linear conceptions of norm change so prominent in the study of German foreign policy and International Relations more generally.
Creating Military Power examines how societies, cultures, political structures, and the global environment affect countries' military organizations. Unlike most analyses of countries' military power, which focus on material and basic resources—such as the size of populations, technological and industrial base, and GNP—this volume takes a more expansive view. The study's overarching argument is that states' global environments and the particularities of their cultures, social structures, and political institutions often affect how they organize and prepare for war, and ultimately impact their effectiveness in battle. The creation of military power is only partially dependent on states' basic material and human assets. Wealth, technology, and human capital certainly matter for a country's ability to create military power, but equally important are the ways a state uses those resources, and this often depends on the political and social environment in which military activity takes place.
This book includes Janowitz's seminal work, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations, with additional new analysis of Latin American nations and of the increasing significance of paramilitary and police forces in authoritarian regimes in developing nations.