Military Sociology

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 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.

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.

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.

This textbook introduces the reader to the field of military sociology through narrative reviews of selected key studies in the discipline. The book provides a guided introduction. In each chapter, the authors set the stage and then immerse the reader in Spotlights – that is, descriptions of essential studies that inform the discipline of military sociology. The goal is to afford readers a ready pathway into how sociologists and social scientists have thought about topics in the study of the military and war. Topics covered in the book include: What is military sociology? What does it have to offer in understanding armed forces, wars, and societies? What basic tools are needed to ply sociological, or more broadly, social science perspectives for studying war and the military? What are the bio-social bases of war? What does the spectrum of such societally organized violence look like? How do societies raise and maintain formal militaries? What are variations in their social composition and in the profiles of civil–military relations? How and why is military organization and war changing so dramatically in the 21st-century? What does the future hold? This book will be of great interest to students of military sociology, the armed forces and society, peace studies, and international relations.