Sociology and Military Studies : Classical and Current Foundations

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.