Keywords

Origins of the Discipline

Simply put, sociology can be simply defined as the scientific study of human life or the study of social institutions brought into being by the industrial transformation of the past two or three centuries. Military sociology is the particular sociology which aims at the study of military facts, that is, facts relating to the military institution, its functional and structural components and its relations with the society. Military sociology is thus the branch of the sociology that focuses more narrowly on individuals within the military institution and the wider society. At the creation of sociology as a discipline in the nineteenth century, military facts and military power were already the subject of study – or at least subject to some consideration – by sociology’s founders, like Max Weber in his examination of the concept of bureaucracy, Emile Durkheim while studying mechanical solidarity in small groups, and Georg Simmel examining the various motives behind conflicts (see Soeters, 2018). But the first really scientific research on military facts did not really begin until the First World War. These studies, carried out in the United States, were mainly undertaken by psychologists and dealt with recruitment (Martin, 1981). The aim was to develop psycho-technical tests to improve personnel selection. Between the two world wars, research in military social sciences stopped progressing and relations between the armed forces and the university became strained.

The Second World War gave rise to a major mobilization of scientists, including social scientists. Problems arose which could not be solved by the old methods, such as motivating troops, adapting recruits to their new environment, the cohesion and efficiency of combat units and groups, officer-troop relations, race relations, morale, combat behavior, and the development of a new culture of warfare. Social scientists were divided into two major groups, the US Army Research Branch and the Psychological Warfare Board. The findings of the US Army Research Branch appeared in Stouffer et al. (1949). Research by the Psychological Warfare Board was partially published by Shils and Janowitz (1948). In the 1950s, research focused on the field of civil-military relations (chapters “Civil-Military Relations: What Is the State of the Field?” and “Dynamic intersection of Military and Society”) and, in particular, the influence of the military in society.

In sum, military sociology remained an underdeveloped field until the late 1950s. Works devoted to it tended to approach military matters as a category of distinct phenomena, and emphasis was placed on military specificities (rigidity of stratifications and authority relations, behavioral traditionalism, ritualism, formalism, value systems, etc.).

Military Sociology During the Cold War

Morris Janowitz can be considered the founder of modern military sociology, and this in two ways. First, from a scientific standpoint, his contribution remains unparalleled, so much so that military sociology is still largely dominated by the Janowitzian model. Second, at the institutional level, he founded the first association of military sociology (the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society) and helped make it a discipline recognized by the scientific community. In order to institutionalize this new field of research, the Research Committee 01 was also established within the International Sociological Association. The first meeting of what became the Research Committee took place at a conference on armed forces held in London in July 1964 at which Janowitz served as the convener and chairman. The purpose of the meeting was to provide an international exploration of the comparative sociology of military institutions. Research Committee 01 was initially established by the International Sociological Association in 1970 with the title Armed Forces and Society. In 1980, reflecting a broadening of its orientation, the committee was renamed Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution.

Janowitz’s book, The Professional Soldier (1971), initiated the development of research in military sociology. First published in 1960, it was devoted to the American officer corps. The book was original in approaching, for the first time, the military organization as a bureaucratic open system (Downs, 1967). It showed that military organizations were not static but adjusted their structures to changes in their environment. The central thesis of the book was the increasing convergence between military and civilian organizations. Janowitz called this convergence the civilianization of military institutions, which meant that military institutions were losing their martial specificity and, consequently, coming to resemble civilian institutions more and more. During the Cold War, American researchers dominated military sociology, though Janowitz inspired a few European sociologists (among them Van Doorn and Gwynn Harries-Jenkins) to conduct research on European militaries. The main topics dealt with the decline of the mass armed forces and the end of the draft, the greater convergence between military and civilian organizations, and the evolution of the military profession. These topics are discussed in the next three sections.

Decline of the Mass Armed Forces

Since military organizations were described by Janowitz (among others) as open systems, it has been found that different forms of society have different types military organization. The era of the mass army began with the American and French revolutionary wars and ended shortly after the Second World War. According to Van Doorn (1975), the word mass in mass armies had three meanings. The first referred to their size in comparison with previous armies. The second referred to the degree of social mobilization necessary to maintain the system: Mass armies required broad military participation of citizens in peacetime (in the form of military service) and on the mobilization of all the forces of the nation during war. Finally, the third and most important meaning referred to the degree of organizational homogeneity of these armies: Mass armies had relatively little social differentiation. They were composed of a small number of professional soldiers supervising a large number of conscripts to which was added, in times of war, an enormous number of mobilized citizens. The functional differentiation was very low and of a specifically military nature (i.e., combat duties). In other words, while the military institution was relatively homogeneous, it was also strongly differentiated from civil society.

The transformation of military organizations that began after the Second World War was characterized by a decline in the model of the mass armies. Broadly speaking, the transformation mirrored one taking place in all complex organizations in post-industrial societies, namely, the transition from labor-intensive organizations to a capital-intensive organizations that used machines. Militaries gradually moved from a model of universal conscription in peacetime and mobilization in times of crisis to a force-in-being model. With the advent of nuclear weapons, moreover, deterrence replaced total war as the dominant strategy. In order to function effectively, deterrence required a military organization immediately and constantly operational, one that regularly incorporated technological innovations – changes that were incompatible with the principle of mobilization central to the mass army system. Janowitz (1971) describes forces-in-being as military organizations composed largely of professionals who are self-sufficient in achieving their objectives without prior mobilization and are in a permanent state of availability and alert. Such militaries had to be structurally and functionally highly differentiated and had to use sophisticated technology. They were significantly smaller than mass armies and strictly military functions were mostly supplanted by technical, logistical, and administrative tasks performed by specialists. In other words, these organizations developed a professional structure much like civilian bureaucracies.

Civilianization of the Armed Forces

As the term suggests, civilianization refers to military organizations gradually becoming more like civilian organizations (Manigart, 1985). Before the twentieth century, the boundary between the military and its surrounding society was easy to draw: The workforce was made up almost exclusively of military personnel and the division of labor was extremely simple, with few rigidly defined hierarchical levels. As previously mentioned, functions were few and oriented to combat. In the twentieth century, however, the combined effect of technological and sociocultural change made militaries more heterogeneous, both in terms of the division of labor and in social terms. The military-civilian boundary has become blurred and more permeable, the military being no longer limited to combat functions, and a significant number of civilians being employed in the armed forces. Moreover, the motivations of military personnel have changed as different roles have been added. This diversity of interests, coupled with greater social heterogeneity, meant that the traditional esprit de corps – the sense of solidarity among the members of the organization – became weaker.

The convergence between civilian and military organization, however, cannot lead to the total elimination of differences between military and civilian institutions. According to Janowitz and Little (1974), three combat-related functions limit this tendency and distinguish military institutions from civilian organizations. First, the military remains a dangerous occupation and the risk is inherent to military service. Second, while combat is now only a small part of the tasks of forces-in-being, it remains its ultimate function and justification. Third, as long as imponderable factors continue to play a role in determining the outcome of a conflict, and as long as the combatant’s spirit is required to fight the battle, the military will tend to reject the civilian model.

Two Models of Political-Military Relations

Huntington’s (1957) model of military professionalism is based on a traditional understanding of political-military relations in democratic societies. For Huntington, the term profession is limited to the officer corps and has three characteristics: competence (expertise), corporate or community sense, and responsibility. The officer’s sphere of competence is the management of violence, and the spheres of competence of the military and political elites are discrete: The officer is not involved in political decision making; instead, the professional officer is a politically neutral tool in the hands of the state. Huntington recognizes that the professionalization of the officer corps depends on civil society being pro-military and conservative – a mentality he calls “conservative realism.”

Unlike Huntington’s model, Janowitz’s (1971) model is based on an empirical analysis of the military profession and political-military relations in industrialized countries. For Janowitz, the technological developments that have led to the civilianization of military organizations have made the traditional democratic model obsolete because it depends on a strict differentiation between political and military functions (even if the civilianization process does not in itself change the constitutional subordination of the military to the government). Janowitz therefore rejects Huntington’s definition of the military’s area of competence as too narrow; the professional soldier is not only a specialist in the management of violence but must also be aware of the political and economic implications of the use of military force. Thus, Janowitz proposes a model of political-military relations where the professional military is not necessarily indifferent to political affairs and, more importantly, where its sphere of competence is no longer exclusively military. Allowing the military a monopoly on military competence, as Huntington suggests, would not minimize the power of the military but increase it. In order to maximize civilian control, the military institution must be civilianized, not militarized. By this Janowitz means that the professional military must adopt civilian values and norms – that is, the military institution must be as socially and ideologically representative of the parent society as possible. In short, where Huntington proposes an autonomous and politically neutral military profession, Janowitz proposes that the military be integrated into society, aware of the political impact of its actions and respectful of civilian power.

Military Profession and the Institution-Occupation Model

The Vietnam War led to the emergence of anti-war movements and, in the academic realm, to more critical military studies. From the 1970s onward, a market-based model of the military – originally proposed by American economists such as Milton Friedman (1967) – progressively replaced the draft system. The draft system was first abolished in 1973 in the United States, and this “human resources revolution” was then followed by most other Western countries. The draft system was considered inequitable, burdening mostly working-class youth and youth of color but also coercing conscience and violating personal liberty (Rech, 2014). With no permanent mobilization, the introduction of an all-volunteer force has posed new challenges to military institutions. With regard to the citizen army, the “market army” was primarily based on material instead of symbolic rewards and led to the rise of a commodified army (Soeters, 2018, p. 46). As a result, the military profession has been less and less seen as a calling or vocation and more and more as an occupation like any other. With the marketization of the military profession, researchers began to look at the motivation of new recruits and how the military can remain competitive in the labor market.

One of the most famous typologies conceptualizing this evolution was the one proposed by Moskos. In his seminal article, “From Institution to Occupation: Trends in Military Organization,” Moskos (1977) distinguished two ideal conceptions of military organizations, an institutional (or traditional) conception, corresponding to mass armies, and an occupational (or instrumental) conception, corresponding to the forces-in-being. Following the decline of mass armies, he argued, military organizations in industrialized countries had gradually moved away from institutional attachments to instrumental ones. In the institutional conception, military personnel are motivated by a calling, by feelings of sacrifice, dedication, and patriotism. They see themselves as different from others, as having an activity of their own. Generally speaking, an institution is legitimized by its values and norms, or, more precisely, by goals that transcend individual interests in favor of a higher general interest. In the occupational conception, however, the military profession is just a job. Members are driven by self-interest and enlist for essentially economic reasons – entering the military is just a way to make a living. It is no longer an end in itself, a source of intrinsic rewards, but rather a means of acquiring extrinsic rewards. As a result, supply and demand, rather than normative considerations, determine the level of remuneration, and the priority is given to the individual rather than to the organization and the common good. Moskos called this shift from the institutional to the occupational model the secularization of military expectations and attributed it to the combined effect of technological and sociocultural factors (especially individualism), factors that were visible across Western societies (also see chapter “Military Profession”). Weber had earlier described these changes as “the disenchantment of the world,” where traditional and value-rational actions had given way to instrumental rationality, guided by self-interest (Soeters, 2018).

Current Trends in Military Sociology

It is evidently impossible to analyze in this contribution all the recent trends which occurred during the last decennia in the realm of military sociology. In this section, we depict several topics that are prominent issues at the core of the current debates in this particular field. The end of the Cold War, combined with technological innovations generated by the third industrial revolution and the globalization of the economy, have led to major changes in military organizations, which researchers such as Snow (1991) and Toffler and Toffler (1993) have called a “revolution in military affairs.” This revolution is a result of precise long-range, joint-strike capabilities and a set of information capabilities that allow for real-time collection and processing of information on a global scale. Long-range capabilities have blurred the distinction between “warriors” and “non-warriors.” We have also moved from an environment dominated by binary logic (friend vs. enemy) to an environment based on multivalent, blurred or, with a term borrowed from cybernetics, a “fuzzy logic of “friend/foe/non foe.” In tone with the multitoned tendency of the multipolar world, this logic is based on the plurality rather than the binarity of actors involved in current conflicts. This fuzzy logic has thus replaced the closed alternative 1/0 (friendly/hostile) with the open alternative 1/0/−1 (Battistelli et al., 1999).

In light of the revolution in military affairs, we have seen the increased globalization of military sociology notably through cross-national publications in journals like Armed Forces and Society (Sookermany, 2017) and a gradual development of comparative research through international scientific associations like the European Research Group on Military and Society (ERGOMAS). This association was originally based in Europe but has since attracted researchers from around the world. ERGOMAS was founded in 1986 and includes the following working groups: Morale, Cohesion and Leadership, Public Opinion, Mass Media and the Military, Gender and the Military, Military Profession, Civilian Control of the Military, Warriors in Peacekeeping, Military Families, Recruitment and Retention, Military and Police Relations, Violence and the Military, Veterans & Society, Military Conflict Management and Peace Economics, Critical Military Studies, Total Defence Force.

Much research over the last decade has focused on the changing environment and the blurring of boundaries between military organizations and other actors but also on the increasing participation of military personnel in culturally complex operations. As Soeters (2018) remarks, military sociologists have rarely directly studied military action in operational theatres, which remains difficult for security reasons. This is also why much of the sociological research conducted in military organizations is done by sociologists working in defense ministries. Over the last decade, however, we have seen academic work conducted in operations that looks at the changing nature of missions, tactics, and cohesion, especially in the major campaigns in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Several authors have tried to analyze various concepts (e.g., cohesion, leadership, decision-making processes) in those twenty-first century interventions. In addition, a growing number of sociologists – mainly insiders working in military institutions – have analyzed the dynamics of military operations through fieldwork in recent military operations like Iraq (Ender, 2009), Afghanistan (King, 2011, 2019; Resteigne, 2012), and Lebanon (Resteigne, 2012; Ruffa, 2014).

The recent research led to a major publication in military sociology, the Handbook of Sociology of the Military, which was edited by Caforio in 2003, with a second and updated edition of the volume published 2018. This volume brought together significant works structured around five topics: theoretical and methodological orientations, armed forces and society, inside the military, trends in the military: conversion and restructuring, and, lastly, a special emphasis on the new missions conducted in the first decade of the new millennium. In the following sections, we discuss some of the major developments in these fields of research.

New Wars, Post-Modern Military, and Constabulary Forces

The post-Cold War geostrategic environment has been characterized by greater complexity and uncertainty when compared with the bipolar world of previous decades (chapters “Military Operations” and “Operations in Irregular Warfare”). Kaldor (1999) uses new wars and old wars as rubrics for marking the changes. Where old wars were fought for geopolitical or ideological objectives, new wars are fought for more particular or identity-based political objectives, using tactics of terror and destabilization, which are, in theory, prohibited by the laws of war. In the current framework, military organizations have been labeled as postmodern (Sookermany, 2015). As initially developed by Inglehart (1999), post-modernization brings a shift away from both traditional and state authority. Moskos and Burk (1994) have summarized, under the form of contrasts, the main differences between what they call early modern (mass armies), late modern (forces-in-being), and postmodern military organizations (Table 1).

Table 1 Evolutions and trends among military organizations
Full size table

The main missions of post-modern military organizations are to combat these new intra-state threats and to maintain or restore peace in regions where our interests are at stake and for humanitarian reasons. This change in the role and missions of postmodern military organizations had been anticipated by Janowitz in the early 1970s. In Professional Soldier (1971), Janowitz foresaw Western militaries functioning as a constabulary force – like an international police force. According to his definition (Janowitz, 1971, p. 418), a constabulary force is immediately operational and uses a minimum of violence; its aim is not (national) victory, but the restoration or establishment of stable international relations. What is new with these so-called postmodern armies (Moskos & Burk, 1994), however, is homeland operations. Concretely, at present, these missions cover conventional combat, counterinsurgency, peacekeeping, or peace enforcement in unstable regions of the world, but also fight against international terrorism abroad and, more recently, within national borders (Resteigne, 2021). One of the implications of the development of such a posture is that the military must be able to modulate the intensity of its use of force within a very short period of time, which requires a high level of professionalism and an extensive period of training.

In the mass armies of the nineteenth–twentieth century, the image one had of the military professional was that of a heroic fighter. After the Second World War, this image evolved as a result of technological change. Two new professional models appeared: the soldier-technician and the soldier-manager (Janowitz, 1971). Effective performance of the officer’s task in the postmodern period with its new missions, most of them in a multinational framework, requires additional skills and capacities (soldier-scholar). Military personnel are indeed more and more entrusted with extramilitary tasks of a political nature (soldier-stateman). Regarding the structure of the force, post-modern military organizations have become smaller organizations but with permeable boundaries with the whole society, notably with regard to the use of the reserve force and other external actors (outsourcing and insourcing). Despite the post-modern shift of the population and a more skeptical or apathetic attitude toward the military, post-modern organizations, as we will see in the following point, should remain socially integrated in their societies, notably for recruitment, legitimacy, and operational imperatives.

Recruitment and Diversifying the Military Organization

In the era of globalization, military organizations are bound to become more diverse internally and externally. Internal recruitment remains challenging because military employment is considered dangerous and relatively unprestigious; thus, volunteer armies find it increasingly difficult to attract enough people in their ranks. Given the post-9/11 conflicts, the recent terrorist attacks in Western Europe, and recent Russian aggression, some countries (like Sweden) have reintroduced draft systems. With the revival of the draft, we can no longer make a binary distinction between conscription and all-volunteer forces; it has become a matter of degree between different levels of vocationalization. Special attention should be given to how the different level of vocationalization of the armed forces affect power structures in society and the political supervision of the military (Levy, 2015). In order to fill their ranks, military organizations also reach out to new segments of the population and try to make themselves more attractive to certain categories of the population that they had neglected until now. Postmodern organizations also try to be more culturally diverse for pragmatic reasons (recruitment) and to improve their image and maintain their legitimacy. Traditionally, the legitimacy of mass armies came, in part, from reflecting the social composition of their respective nation-states. Postmodern military organizations need to increase their cultural diversity to include all social groups. The emphasis is more on cooperation than before, and most military operations are now undertaken by multinational forces (Resteigne, 2012). The developments mirror those in the civilian sector, namely, the proliferation of joint ventures, strategic alliances, and other virtual organizations. In order to function effectively, there is a growing need for intercultural competences and for training the workforce to nontraditional military tasks and duties of a political nature (e.g., relations with local authorities, with the local population, with other contingents).

A growing number of academics have studied how diversity affects traditionally homogeneous military organizations. Ethnicity and race dynamics were particularly studied in the United States where the share of racial and ethnic minorities has grown in recent decades and composes almost half of the global workforce today. As highlighted by Shields (chapter “Dynamic Intersection of Military and Society”), the military is shaped by the culture and belief systems of society and mirrors practices of the larger culture which sometimes leads to policies of exclusion or marginalization. On the gender side, even if the role of women in the armed forces has a long history, the feminization of the military is still studied among conventional forces (chapter “Women in the Military: Changing in Representation and Experiences”; Nuciari, 2003; Winslow, 2010) and, more recently, among special operations forces (Rones, 2017). Three years after publishing The Combat Soldier, King (2016) also analyzed the changing nature of combat roles, notably through the accession of women, in his article “The Female Combat Soldier.” Based on his extensive work on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, he showed how female soldiers remain stigmatized with culturally denigrated codes in military organizations. Even if there are a growing number of women who become military leaders, the masculine domination (Bourdieu, 1998) remains persistent through routines, bias, stereotypes, and what has been called “naturally expected” attitudes and behaviors. Many obstacles and basic assumptions related to the military culture and the masculine warrior paradigm (Dunivin, 1994) still prevent military organizations from becoming fully inclusive workplaces. Although changes have been observed at the legal and organizational level, some deep-rooted elements of this masculine domination remain persistent in the mentality of military personnel, both among men and women (Resteigne, 2015).

Professionalism and the Changing Nature of Cohesion

With smaller workforces operating in culturally complex environments, military organizations have been pushed to evolve. This was underlined by Moskos and Burk in the 1990s when they described the postmodern military (1994) and the soldier-scholars and soldier-statesmen required by it. Soldier-scholars were postmodern officers expected to master the complexity of new missions and their environment and to follow a more advanced academic training, and by soldier-statesmen, that the postmodern officers are skilled in handling the media and adept in the intricacies of international diplomacy. Observing these profound occupational changes, several researchers have reassessed the meaning of professionalism in small and professional military organizations. In most contemporary service occupations, professionalism is being constructed and imposed by the majority through a top-down process. The ideals of dedicated service, autonomous decision making, and occupational control of work are part of the appeal of the discourse of professionalism (Evetts, 2003). The concept of professionalism is also very often used as a promotional motto to attract new recruits (e.g., the quiet professionals referring to the Special Forces).

Several studies have looked at the effect of group cohesion on performance and the level of professionalism in a group. Classic studies, particularly that of Shils and Janowitz (1948) on the cohesion and disintegration of the Wehrmacht during the Second World War, showed that cohesion and morale among combat troops was based on the existence and development of primary groups within basic military formations. As long as the primary relationships within sections and platoons were maintained, and as long as the basic needs of the group were met, the units functioned satisfactorily. Nowadays, social cohesion still plays a fundamental role in military groups, but the existence of primary groups is not sufficient in itself to ensure the proper functioning of military units. Burk (1999, p. 447) defined cohesion as the emotional bonds of camaraderie, of shared identity among soldiers in a small group. MacCoun (1993, p. 291) drew a conceptual distinction between social cohesion and task cohesion. Social cohesion underlies the emotional bonds of friendship, liking, caring, and closeness among group members, while task cohesion refers to the shared commitment among members to achieving a goal that requires the collective efforts of the group. Members of a group with high task cohesion share a common goal and are motivated to coordinate their efforts as a team to achieve their goal. A related distinction is the one between horizontal and vertical cohesion. Task cohesion and social cohesion both refer to the group level and to horizontal cohesion, while vertical cohesion refers to downward or upward cohesion (between leaders and followers). In his book The Combat Soldier (2013), King analyzed how small groups of professional soldiers perform in the battlefield today and develop new forms of cohesion. He showed that unit cohesion is influenced by a variety of factors. In particular, he argued that, despite the greater heterogeneity among units and shorter rotations, cohesion can be generated through professionalism based on drills and intensive training, instead of the comradeship characteristic of the “bands of brothers” experience in the Second World War.

Managerial Work, Leadership, and Command

Military sociology might be the sociology of one specific type of organization, but the military is unlike any other organization. As Soeters (2000) put it, the military is a Janusian organization: One face deals with peacetime conditions, making it resemble an ordinary organization, and the other deals with crises and military operations. For this reason, researchers see the armed forces as unique organizations that require particular leadership skills (chapter “Military Leadership”). In their case studies conducted at Kabul airport, Resteigne and Soeters (2009) observed how managerial roles can be exerted with different emphases, depending on the hierarchical level, the functional area, and the specific working environment. Based on Mintzberg’s model, they showed that military managers are not merely engaged in planning and thinking but spend relatively little time thinking about what they have to do and how to do it. Managers predominantly act according to their intuition, their “gut feeling,” so managers are not confined to traditional managerial roles: the informational roles which link all the work together, the interpersonal roles which ensure that information is transmitted and the decisional roles which require the use of information to take the “good decisions.” As a result of changes in their operating environment, military organizations have had to redefine traditional concepts about what makes a successful manager or leader. The leadership challenges in today’s military organizations are daunting, both during peacetime training and on operations. The most successful military leaders today seem to engage in participatory leadership (King, 2019). Such leaders focus on empowering their subordinates, and they are also able to relate to their foreign counterparts and to local populations. In his most recent book Command (2019), based on interviews conducted with leading generals, King shows the complexity of military decision making and the transformation of military command. In the previous century, generals monopolized decision making. Nowadays, the concept of collective command has emerged to capture the increasingly complex and distributed decision-making process. Further, King (2019, pp. 156–157, Resteigne & Van den Bogaert, 2020) describes how leadership since the end of the Cold War changed from providing “combat motivation” to “providing a lasting sense of purpose” and “the ability to motivate its workforce to stay with the organization.” The importance of decision-making communities and distributed forms of authority are not only visible in the military but also in most large organizations, which have to manage diverse and complex activities.

Conclusion

Military sociology was influential in the 1950s and 1960s. While it later waned, the last couple of decades have seen the discipline reemerge in prominence as a growing number of researchers have collected empirical data on operations. Several sociologists have also tried to develop theoretical insights to improve the current knowledge of armed forces in their changing societal contexts and to connect military sociology with other sociological domains. In Sociology and Military Studies: Classical and Current Foundations, Soeters (2018) highlighted the connections between the founders of sociology and the contemporary challenges facing military organizations. New insights have thus been provided not only to help military organizations to perform in a complex and challenging environment but also to increase the profile of military sociology among the broader sociological field. As we have seen, military sociologists have analyzed the processes that shape military life, but this task is sometimes limited by their status as insiders. With the declining public interest in military affairs, military sociologists can offer an important contribution not only to understanding how military organizations are organized around power structures, groups, and individuals but also how to maintain a relationship with the broader society.

Further Reading