Abstract
Since Huntington (1957), the understanding of the officer corps and the relationship between the armed forces and society has drawn upon the wider theoretical literature of professions. Over time, however, both theoretical advances (e.g., development of more conflictual theoretical models) and societal changes (e.g., declining autonomy of professions from the state and markets, competition over jurisdictional domains with other types of vocations) have impacted the explanatory power and suitability of employing the theoretical concept of professions to the study of contemporary militaries. Recently, Eyal and Pok (2015) have provided a review of the literature on professions and its pitfalls as well as an alternative conceptual framework. Although they have demonstrated its utility in the study of the security domain, their research discussed neither the military nor the officer corps. This paper draws on Eyal and Pok’s review of the evolution of the concept of professions and adapts their alternative framework to the military profession.
The current chapter is based on study conducted in the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI), and was financed by Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca [2014 BP_B 00147 (AGAUR)]. An earlier version of the core of this chapter was published as the theoretical part of Libel (2019).
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Notes
- 1.
“A basic premise of structural functionalism is that society needs a certain level of social cohesion, solidarity, or integration in order to function, and structural functionalists can be regarded as attempting to identify, and perhaps promote, the sources and forms of social cohesion” (Dew 2014, p. 1).
- 2.
- 3.
This trend continued if not until this day than for several decades at least. Writing in the late 1980s, Caforio (1988, p. 65) indicated that although there were many studies concerning the relations between the military profession and its parent society, “they are all studies that have been done from outside the military profession (or, at least, on its relations with the outside world), almost as if the military were an impenetrable subject of study, one not approachable from within.”
- 4.
Moelker and Soeters (2008, p. 36) defined Van Doorn as one of the founding fathers of military sociology, alongside Janowitz and Raymond Aron.
- 5.
Moten (2011) eloquently described this practice as follows: “From time to time in the United States, a clearly defined word will find itself dragooned by popular culture to serve the common lexicon. Before long, that proud old word will get bandied about so much that it changes and morphs into something that is at once broader and less than its former self. The term professional is such a word. Today, everyone wants to be a professional” (p. 14).
- 6.
It should be emphasized that the concept of military professionalism maintains its theoretical value for analysis of historical periods or geographical regions in which professions are either not in crisis or are able to win battles over jurisdiction (Burk 2002).
- 7.
For a first implementation of sociology of security expertise see Libel (2019).
- 8.
For comprehensive discussion of this issue see the Chap. 15 in this volume.
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Libel, T. (2020). The Rise and Fall of the Study of the Military Profession: From the Sociology of the Military Profession to the Sociology of Security Expertise. In: Hachey, K., Libel, T., Dean, W. (eds) Rethinking Military Professionalism for the Changing Armed Forces. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45570-5_2
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