SAGE Library of Military and Strategic Studies – serie

The discipline of military psychology involves the systematic and scientific study of the selection, training, adaptation, and performance of soldiers. Military psychology, by necessity, is a heterogeneous field of inquiry. On the one hand, it draws on all subdisciplines of psychology to understand the variables that affect soldier performance while on the other hand, lessons learned from military psychology are of vital importance to all areas of psychology. The purpose of this collection of readings is to capture significant developments from military psychology that are of general interest and importance to all psychologists and to promote understanding in human behaviour in challenging contexts.Volume One: Selection, Training and Performance captures significant advances in how soldiers are selected, assigned, and trained.Volume Two: Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology includes topics of human factors engineering, cognitive engineering, ergonomics, situational awareness and soldier performance. Volume Three: Stress and Resilience focuses on classic and contemporary studies of combat stress and its consequences.Volume Four: Leadership, Culture and Morale advances the understanding of leading people in the contexts of dangerous environments.

Early European sociologists found war, peace and the effects of both on social development to be important matters for the emerging discipline to explain and understand. Curiously, these issues faded from the sociological agenda after World War I and were not again much studied by sociologists until World War II and the long Cold War that followed. Since then to the present, studies of military sociology have grown in number and scope. Military sociology is now a well-established and respected subfield within sociology.To survey the field this collection is organized around four major themes: (1) military organization, (2) civil-military relations, (3) the experience of war, and (4) the use and control of force. Taking the origins of military sociology as a starting point: Volume One examines major trends in military organization, the increased diversity of military forces and the military profession. Volume Two considers the military′s relationships with the larger society. Sociologists examine how the military is woven into the fabric of society whether as an object of social control or as a representative institution garnering public support. Volume Three is concerned with the experience of war, whether the experience is direct, gained (for example) as a soldier in combat, or indirect, when it is mediated by social constructions of language and other social symbols. Volume Four studies the concept of force, and the varying intensities of conflict across the spectrum of force. It looks at the effects of war on state formation, the problems posed by chronic war, and the prospects for peacekeeping.