{"id":90,"date":"2018-10-31T11:26:15","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T11:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/militaryresearchatnewcastle\/?p=90"},"modified":"2018-10-31T11:26:15","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T11:26:15","slug":"on-the-links-between-sociology-and-the-armed-forces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/militaryresearchatnewcastle\/2018\/10\/31\/on-the-links-between-sociology-and-the-armed-forces\/","title":{"rendered":"On the links between sociology and the armed forces"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been re-reading a bit of Squaddies<\/strong><\/em><\/a> recently, John Hockey\u2019s ethnography of a British Army infantry unit.\u00a0 It was first published in 1986, and is now something of a classic of military sociology.\u00a0 It drew on John\u2019s PhD fieldwork which involved a period of time living and working with a group of soldiers, something John was well qualified to do.\u00a0 It\u2019s still an essential reference for understanding military participation (check out the citations in Google Scholar), and an absorbing and informative account. \u00a0I was re-reading it having just reviewed a paper which was quoting it, and as often happens, I found myself carrying on reading after checking out the point I was after.\u00a0 Proof, to me, of the enduring value of this book.<\/p>\n

Above all else, Squaddies <\/em>seems to me to provide clear validation for the argument that military forces and the defence community in general have much to gain from sociology and a sociological understanding of military forces.\u00a0 There\u2019s often a degree of antipathy within military and defence circles to the insights of sociological thinking on military matters.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve been told many times over the years, in discussions with people working within these circles, that certain arguments are somehow unreliable because of the methodologies used, particularly when the methods concerned sit at the qualitative end of the spectrum.\u00a0 Or it\u2019s been explained to me that much sociology is insufficiently \u2018objective\u2019, reflecting a mis-perception particularly of the more critical military sociological analyses that are out there, which are trying to examine military phenomena with reference to the political contexts in which they sit.<\/p>\n

Yet I was struck when reading my Google news feed last week (set to deliver a round-up of news using alert terms like \u2018British\u2019 and \u2018armed forces\u2019) how the majority of news stories about British military forces are essentially about sociological issues.\u00a0 Last week\u2019s feed, for example, reported stories on obesity levels among military personnel<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(so about bodies and embodiment), suicide rates amongst former personnel<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(so about the sociology of trauma and mental health) and a stream of invective on a far right website in response to a Centre for Army Leadership piece about women\u2019s military participation<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(so about gender and the structuring of social life).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also frequently reminded \u2013 not least by John Hockey\u2019s work \u2013 about the contributions to military sociology by academics who have a military background and who have used their thinking and training in social science in their interventions about military sociological phenomena.\u00a0 John Hockey is a case in point, of course, and he reflects on this a little in his chapter in The Routledge Companion to Military Research Methods<\/strong><\/a>, as does David Walker.\u00a0 I can think of a number of others similarly placed \u2013 Lauren Greenwood, Neil Jenkings, Patrick Bury, Ross McGarry, Anthony Forster, Godfrey Maringira, Ryerson Christie, Kevin Spruce, Hannah West \u2013 who even if they don\u2019t describe themselves as sociologists, clearly (to me, at any rate) use their military experience to inform their academic social scientific research in ways that seem sociological.<\/p>\n

I wonder if the UK is quite distinct in the ways that the defence and academic military research communities engage with each other (or don\u2019t), and whether this explains at least some of the antipathy towards military sociology\u2019s insights?\u00a0 The North American context is quite different, with the \u2018soldier-scholar\u2019 model animating much work behind the IUS-AFS<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and the journal Armed Forces & Society<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 In mainland Europe the practice of social scientists working within defence ministries, evident in the ERGOMAS<\/strong><\/a> meetings and the recently revived journal Res Militaris<\/strong><\/a>, mean that a very different military institutional view is possible of the benefits of sociological approaches to military issues.\u00a0 In the UK, it seems that some kinds of social science \u2013 behavioural psychology, management studies \u2013 are considered useful for the Ministry of Defence and the armed forces.\u00a0\u00a0 The work of a few social scientists has had clear utility over time in shaping defence thinking (see for example Tony King\u2019s work on military transformations<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0or Tim Edmunds\u2019 on security sector reform<\/a>)<\/strong>.\u00a0 But beyond these examples, I often feel that we\u2019re missing a trick here in the UK.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the critical analyses, in particular, that have the most to offer.\u00a0 Those labouring in the Ministry of Defence to respond to the Government latest anxieties about the armed forces \/ civil society disconnect, would surely have an easier time if they went through a few back-issues of Critical Military Studies<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>to help with their thinking (even if they disagree with the analysis).\u00a0 For those faced with unpicking the multiple problems caused by the outsourcing of military tasks and requirements, such as base maintenance or personnel recruitment, something like Swed and Crosbie\u2019s The Sociology of Privatized Security<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>might help. \u00a0Concerns about the fine lines between criminal acts and acts legitimated under rules of engagement call for insights on criminology and war<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 The list is almost endless; the point is that sociological analyses (including, perhaps even particularly, those most critically engaged with military activities and phenomena) have\u00a0enormous potential to inform the UK\u2019s military and defence policy and practice.<\/p>\n

Above all else, the idea persists with me that most military personnel are actually really good sociologists \u2013 and to return to the starting point, I think this is one reason why Squaddies<\/em> is such a good book.\u00a0 Military personnel live and work from a relatively young age in an institution, so social structures, organisations, hierarchies and institutional behaviours are thoroughly familiar, and they\u2019re dealing with other people all the time, so identities, positionality, micro-politics and embodiment are routine, daily issues. \u00a0Sociology and the armed forces seem to fit together well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rachel Woodward<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been re-reading a bit of Squaddies recently, John Hockey\u2019s ethnography of a British Army infantry unit.\u00a0 It was first published in 1986, and is now something of a classic of military sociology.\u00a0 It drew on John\u2019s PhD fieldwork which involved a period of time living and working with a group of soldiers, something John … Continue reading On the links between sociology and the armed forces<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7655,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[6,5,22,23],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","tag-critical-military-studies","tag-militarism","tag-sociology","tag-squaddies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/militaryresearchatnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/militaryresearchatnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/militaryresearchatnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/militaryresearchatnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7655"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/militaryresearchatnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/militaryresearchatnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/militaryresearchatnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/militaryresearchatnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/militaryresearchatnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/militaryresearchatnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}