Institutional change in armed forces at the dawning of the 21 century

Type :

Presentation

Pages :

9 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

12/04/2008

Category :

Arts & media

Sub category :

Journalism

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Summary :

Introduction.
Background.
World War II and the postwar period.
The Korean and Vietnam Wars.
1. Sociological research during the Korean War.
2. Administrative and leadership roles.
3. The conscription based mass armed forces of the first three decades of the Cold War.
The emergence of an industrial military after the Vietnam War.
1. The social turbulence in Western industrial nations in the 1960s.
2. The evaluation of performance of personnel in the institutional military.
3. A 1985 conference on the institutional and occupational military models.
4. The continuations of conscription and tendencies to avoid specialization.
The Post-Cold War army.
1. The dramatic decline of the mass armed force.
2. The participation of women in the military forces of Western European nations.
3. The families of professional soldiers.
4. The developmental construct of the post-Cold War military.
Latin American military morces.
1. The form and structure of military organization in Latin America.
2. The lack strong penetrating political parties capable of checking the power or strength of the military.
Conclusion.

Abstract

Although the military as a social institution and war as a social process figured prominently in classical sociological theory, military sociology did not emerge as a field of empirical study until World War II. Then, for four decades, the field was dominated by scholars in the United States, whose research agenda reflected the concerns of the Cold War period. As we enter the twenty-first century, military sociology is being globalized. At the same time, the military institution is being transformed, as the end of the Cold War in Europe and the worldwide democratic revolution require nations to reconsider the structure, roles and missions of their armed forces. In this chapter we use movement toward a post-Cold War military as a developmental construct to describe the changes that have taken place in military organization and in civil-military relations. The military, in one form or another, played a major role in most societies. Furthermore, most industrial societies were also military powers. In many modern industrialized nations, such as Switzerland, Israel, and the Soviet Union, the military played a major integrative role in society. In developing nations, such as those of Latin America, the military has been the central actor in both domestic social control and modernization, with the social control function shifting from counter-insurgency to drug interdiction.