Military sociology
It corresponds closely to C. Wright Mills's summons to connect the individual world to broader social structures.
This highly specialized sub-discipline examines issues related to service personnel as a distinct group with coerced collective action based on shared interests linked to survival in vocation and combat, with purposes and values that are more defined and narrow than within civil society.
The dismantling of the Soviet Union, the trauma of the terrorist attack on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq also dramatically affected the field of military sociology.
[1][9] Janowitz, on the other hand, asserted that the role of the military in modern society was so complex, and with such high stakes that the duty of the professional soldier went well beyond the execution of violence.
Many young people look to the military for compensation benefits and the opportunity to attend college without enormous loans.
[13] Moskos's model has influenced the scholarship of enlistment/reenlistment, which looks at how occupational and institutional factors shape a recruit's enlistment intention or the reenlistment decisions of active duty personnel.
This term means the ability to quickly round up or call up troops for war or military tour at a virtual moment's notice.
The emotional stress that a partner can experience, before, during and after a soldier, sailor, marine or airman's deployment is perhaps just as bad mentally, as the one who is fighting in the military.
Those whose husbands or wives were deployed for the first time, rated their feelings about the whole experience as being very sad, and found it difficult to cope with the sudden absence of their loved one.
[15][16][citation needed] Deployments can last anywhere from 90 days to 15 months,[17] and during this time, the role that the members of the family believe they should hold changes.
[18] Approximately one-fifth of all enlisted 18-year-olds and one-third of all junior personnel in the United States Army are married, compared to less than 5% of civilian 18-year-olds.
[20] De Soir suggests there are seven stages in the way partners of married personnel experience stress before, during and after deployment.
[26] Youth inclusion in armed conflict is not a new concept or one restricted to large well organized forces such as the United States military.
Such instances include the Dinka of the Sudan, boys who received spears as an initiation rite between sixteen and eighteen years of age, the nineteenth-century Cheyenne who joined their first war parties when they were about fourteen, and the female warriors of Dahomey who were recruited between nine and fifteen.
[27] During the American Civil War, it has been estimated that between 250,000 and 420,000 soldiers under 18 years of age served in Union and Confederate armies, which yields somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of recruits.
[27] During these earlier periods youth was not looked upon in the context of innocence as it is framed today, rather children were seen as naturally existing with adults, as they frequently coexisted with them through apprenticeships and other work.
This has caused some students at the Naval Academy to seek legal help from the American Civil Liberties Union.
A comparable practice of pre-meal prayers for compulsory meals at the Virginia Military Institute was found unconstitutional by the 4th U.S.
In comparison with the nearest available age group, a demographic of 20- to 39-year-olds that make up eighty percent of the military, there are slight variations.
Mainline Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists are underrepresented, but other Christian religions (such as the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Church of God, Seventh Day Adventists, Assemblies of God, and others) disproportionately overrepresented, at nearly three times the percentage in the applicable demographic.
The data and other studies suggest that servicemembers may be less likely to identify with mainstream religious organizations than the country's general population.
In these cases where military service was voluntary, minorities saw it as an opportunity to progress socially in the society, and perhaps achieve citizenship for themselves and by extension, to their children.
With the end of job exclusion by 1954 reenlistment rates increased on average until they were close to double that of Caucasian servicemen.
[31] The roles of women can include being the transmitter of cultural values to children, reproducers of boundaries and active militants in national struggles.
The confidence of female personnel in being treated "with dignity and respect" by their chain of command after reporting an assault was 39%, a decrease from 66% in 2018.
[35] Jane Addams and Cynthia Enloe have been identified as women who have contributed key ideas to military sociology.
[40] Estimates have been made that in 2000 there were 1 million gay and lesbian veterans in the U.S. population as based on census information.
The relationship has changed somewhat from the 16th and 17th centuries, however, where internal centers of power and specific sectors of society (e.g., skilled builders or guilds) were somewhat more autonomous than the rest.
The use of research and industry to develop new and more deadly chemical and biological weapons is an intriguing aspect of the modern military.
German universities were involved in early chemical gas development for use in World War I. German universities "carefully cultivated the ideal of science as an emphatically value-free activity; they bestowed upon their wards the right and the duty to serve the interests of knowledge and to brush aside other interests with which the welfare of scientific pursuits might clash."
