Military Sociology: A Guided Introduction

This textbook introduces the reader to the field of military sociology through narrative reviews of selected key studies in the discipline.

The book provides a guided introduction. In each chapter, the authors set the stage and then immerse the reader in Spotlights - i.e., descriptions of essential studies that inform the discipline of military sociology. The goal is to afford readers a ready pathway into how sociologists and social scientists have thought about topics in the study of the military and war.

Topics covered in the book include:

• what is military sociology; what does it have to offer in understanding armed forces, wars, and societies?

• what basic tools are needed to ply sociological, or more broadly, social science perspectives for studying war and the military?

• what are the bio-social bases of war; what does the spectrum of such societally organized violence look like?

• how do societies raise and maintain formal militaries; what are variations in their social composition and in the profiles of civil-military relations?

• how and why is military organization and war changing so dramatically in the 21st century; what does the future hold?

This book will be of great interest to students of military sociology, armed forces and society, peace studies and International Relations.