Military Sociology

Early European sociologists found war, peace, and the effects of both on social development to be important matters for the emerging discipline to explain and understand. Curiously, these issues faded from the sociological agenda after World War I and were not again much studied by sociologists until World War II and the long Cold War that followed. Since then to the present, studies of military sociology have grown in number and scope. Military sociology is now a well-established and respected subfield within sociology.

To survey the field this collection is organized around four major themes: (1) military organization, (2) civil-military relations, (3) the experience of war, and (4) the use and control of force.

Taking the origins of military sociology as a starting point, Volume I examines ...

Editors' Introduction

JamesBurk and DavidR.Segal

The Disciplinary Background

The field of military sociology developed in response to a number of factors, beginning with the emergence of sociology as a discipline independent from its roots in social philosophy and distinguished from other social sciences, most notably from psychology and economics. Evidence of this effort is found, for instance, in the work of Herbert Spencer, which described social evolution as a movement from militant and violent to an industrial and pacific society (Battistelli, 1993). Also important were the cultivation of an applied sociology within the military during the 20th century and a changing historical context from the 20th century to the present that has radically altered the structure of the modern world system and the nature of war. From ...

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