Military Recruitment Strategies

The social scientific study of military recruitment and military recruitment strategies can be divided into two more or less distinct schools: one associated with military sociology and one with recent multidisciplinary efforts to understand recruitment as part of a social condition of militarization. The former school is tied to the institutionalization of military sociology during World War II (1939–1945) and, later, with the shift to all-volunteer forces in the Anglo-American world from the 1960s onward. It has, and still maintains, a close working relationship with military institutions. The latter school, associated most closely with human geography, critical international relations, and media and communications studies, developed as part of broader critiques of militarism and popular culture. Recent work, reflecting changes in post-9/11 military public relations in ...