Studies In The Scope And Method Of The American Soldier

This volume offers an overview of the methodologies of research in the field of military studies. As an institution relying on individuals and resources provided by society, the military has been studied by scholars from a wide range of disciplines: political science, sociology, history, psychology, anthropology, economics and administrative studies. The methodological approaches in these disciplines vary from computational modelling of conflicts and surveys of military performance, to the qualitative study of military stories from the battlefield and veterans experiences. Rapidly developing technological facilities (more powerful hardware, more sophisticated software, digitalization of documents and pictures) render the methodologies in use more dynamic than ever. The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Military Studies offers a comprehensive and dynamic overview of these developments as they emerge in the many approaches to military studies. The chapters in this Handbook are divided over four parts: starting research, qualitative methods, quantitative methods, and finalizing a study, and every chapter starts with the description of a well-published study illustrating the methodological issues that will be dealt with in that particular chapter. Hence, this Handbook not only provides methodological know-how, but also offers a useful overview of military studies from a variety of research perspectives. This Handbook will be of much interest to students of military studies, security and war studies, civil-military relations, military sociology, political science and research methods in general.

M. Brewster Smith has been a pivotal figure in social psychology and personality studies for more than half a century. "For a Significant Social Psychology" collects Smith's most important writings, introduced by the author and presented thematically.

Some warriors are drawn to the thrill of combat and find it the defining moment of their lives. Others fall victim to fear, exhaustion, impaired reasoning, and despair. This was certainly true for twentieth-century American ground troops. Whether embracing or being demoralized by war, these men risked their lives for causes larger than themselves with no promise of safe return. This book is the first to synthesize the wartime experiences of American combat soldiers, from the doughboys of World War I to the grunts of Vietnam. Focusing on both soldiers and marines, it draws on histories and memoirs, oral histories, psychological and sociological studies, and even fiction to show that their experiences remain fundamentally the same regardless of the enemy, terrain, training, or weaponry. Peter Kindsvatter gets inside the minds of American soldiers to reveal what motivated them to serve and how they were turned into soldiers. He recreates the physical and emotional aspects of war to tell how fighting men dealt with danger and hardship, and he explores the roles of comradeship, leadership, and the sustaining beliefs in cause and country. He also illuminates soldiers’ attitudes toward the enemy, toward the rear echelon, and toward the home front. And he tells why some broke down under fire while others excelled. Here are the first tastes of battle, as when a green recruit reported that “for the first time I realized that the people over the ridge wanted to kill me,” while another was befuddled by the unfamiliar sound of bullets whizzing overhead. Here are soldiers struggling to cope with war’s stress by seeking solace from local women or simply smoking cigarettes. And here are tales of combat avoidance and fraggings not unique to Vietnam, of soldiers in Korea disgruntled over home-front indifference, and of the unique experiences of African American soldiers in the Jim Crow army. By capturing the core “band of brothers” experience across several generations of warfare, Kindsvatter celebrates the American soldier while helping us to better understand war’s lethal reality--and why soldiers persevere in the face of its horrors.

"... the book is not only a study of the history of sociological research methods in America, but it is an excellent piece of sociological research itself." Shulamit Reinhart, Journal for the History of the Behavioral Sciences. "This is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of what really went on in US universities at a key point in the development of sociology and an almighty sideswipe at a great deal of the discipline's subordination to theorists from within and from without the subject. Sociologists should not just order this book for the library and leave it to gather dust. Buy it, study it and reflect on the state of their subject." Frank Webster, Times Higher Education Supplement. "this study is "without doubt" an important contribution to our understanding of an area of sociology colonized in ways that can serve as much to obscure, as to enlighten, our understanding of its development ..." Tim May, History of the Human Sciences. "The bibliography of this book will in itself provide an excellent resource for sociological historians, methodologists and practitioners alike... in the ultimate analysis, the key finding of this important book lies in the evidence it provides of the continuing need for intellectual justification of changing practices, and of the significance of critical analysis for methodological advance in a discipline, which ... is shown to be cumulative in the best sense of the word." Stine Lyon, Reviewing Sociology.

Doing Social Research is an easy-to-understand guidebook for readers who have little or no knowledge of the social research process. Written in a clear, straightforward style, this book presents the various topics of social research in the outline form of all sociological research articles, providing a concise overview of the most important elements of social research. As an added bonus, synopses of classical studies introduce readers to the early pioneers of social research.