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In this article, we investigate public attitudes toward combat veterans returning from Iraq. Using data from a nationally representative survey that incorporates an experimental design, we assess the extent to which attitudes toward military veterans and private contractors differ, and whether public attitudes toward men vary based on combat and war zone experience. Drawing on social psychology and military sociology, we test hypotheses derived from a conceptual model of stigma and from research on the cultural injunction to “support the troops.” Consistent with the first portion of the stigma model, members of the public are not surprised to learn that men who went to a war zone behave according to stereotypes that imply that such men have problems with mental health, substance abuse, and violent behavior. Yet they do not discriminate against these men. Instead they favor men who went to Iraq compared to those who stayed in the United States. They also favor veterans compared to contractors. While combat veterans may be stereotyped, they are not stigmatized. They benefit from symbolic capital, which outweighs the effect of stereotypes on discrimination.
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Existing legal responses to sexual assault and harassment in the military have stagnated or failed. Current approaches emphasize the prevalence of sexual assault and highlight the masculine nature of the military’s statistical composition and institutional culture. Current responses do not, however, incorporate masculinities theory to disentangle the experiences of men as a group from men as individuals. Rather, embedded within contestations of the masculine military culture is the un- stated assumption that the culture universally privileges or benefits the individual men that operate within it. This myth is harmful because it tethers masculinities to military efficacy, suppresses the costs of male violence to men, and positions women as perpetual outsiders. Debunking the myth of universal male privilege in heavily masculinized institu- tions would advance gender equality and shift the law reform focus. It would bring sexual assault, domestic violence, and sexual harassment into the same frame as the military mental health crisis and even mass solidier-on-soldier shootings. This would reveal the gender equality implications of military mental health and disen- tangle masculinities and military efficacy. Debunking the myth of univeral male privilege would yield more vigilance to how law reforms can exacerbate hyper-mas- culine violence. It introduces new entry points to gendered violence in the military, expanding the focus from incident-based responses to recruiting and training.
2012, Advances in Social Work
Though private military and security companies (PMSCs) have been addressed extensively in the literature, little research has been done on the contractors themselves, leaving us in the dark as to who these individuals are. In this article, we focus on the critical case of the United States armed services and argue that two broad developments have been converging that both point to the need for new, microlevel sociological research on the people who are involved in the global PMSC industry. To this end, we first draw from an extensive political science literature to illustrate the rise of the PMSCs and concomitant evolution of the security sector, while noting a new trend that points to the need for moving from the macrosocial to the microsocial level of inquiry. Second, we indicate the challenges contractors pose to the sociological paradigm of military professionalism: These suggest a need to move from the mesosocial to the microsocial level of inquiry. We conclude by reviewing the existing research on the demographics of the sector and then indicating the troubling gaps in our current understanding of this critical sector of the national security apparatus.
Service members and veterans face a myriad of health, mental health, and social challenges stemming from the combat and operational stressors experienced during deployment and the challenges of reintegration to civilian life. To intervene effectively with this population, social workers must be knowledgeable about these issues and the cultural context within which they occur. Although schools of social work across the country are developing course work in military social work, little is known about the learning outcomes of these courses. This article describes a military social work course that was developed to increase student preparedness to work with a military or veteran population and the learning outcomes achieved. Using a quasi-experimental pre–post design, this study compared the learning outcomes of students enrolled in the course with a group of students who had not taken the course. To measure this knowledge, the authors developed a 50-item Military Social Work Knowledge Scale for the study. Significant differences between pre-and posttest scores were found for the social work students enrolled in the course. Specific areas of knowledge that increased for the class participants included knowledge about cultural sensitivity to military populations and knowledge about service and advocacy frameworks.
2010, Sociological Perspectives
Most existing literature on religion/spirituality (R/S) and resiliency focuses on mainstream populations, where R/S appears to be a search for positive meaning, protective factors, and a predictor of successful adaptation in coping with adversity. The role of R/S in fostering resilience among Muslim Military Personnel (MMP) and other minority faith groups is understudied, and it remains unclear how religious coping strategies apply to minority religious groups when faced with faith-related stressors. This study explores situations in which R/S is perceived as both a protective and a risk factor for MMP and describes the effects that faith-related stressors have on their psychological wellbeing. The study used in-depth individual interviews with 20 U.S. MMP, active, reserves/national guards, and retired, from different backgrounds. Grounded thematic analysis guided the processing of qualitative interview data, using the software package NVivo9. The results demonstrate the central role of R/S and practice in the life of MMP, support the approach of understanding resiliency through vulnerability, as well as the importance of the cultural meaning MMP attach to their experiences with adversity and how these meanings contribute to their resiliency. The study has policy and practice implications for social work and other helping professions, as well as for current and likely future American wars and the organization of faith-based services within the total U.S. Armed Forces (USAF).
How does the state encourage individuals to willingly sacrifice their lives for their country or at least be prepared to make that sacrifice even if not for an immediate war? This unresolved problem has always troubled social scientists. Knowing how to mobilize for war has long been a challenge for Western societies. Scholars have paid much attention to this process, however gaps still remain in addressing the mechanisms that contribute to the mobilization for war, especially with regard to the sacrifice that it entails. This article follows and elaborates on the common though not undisputed approach of the bellicose school of state formation regarding the affinity between state formation and preparations for war. In his famous " war makes state " argument, Tilly (1992) showed how the extensive introduction of artillery and gunpowder in sixteenth and seventeenth-century warfare led state agencies to recruit resources for military build-up. State activities aimed at preparing for and legitimizing ABSTRACT: This article follows the approach, drawn from the bellicose school of state formation, according to which the state mobilizes the war sacrifice of its citizenry in return for rewards that different groups reap from military service. However, a significant gap in this school can be identified: Scholars have not theorized the variations in the value of the rewards that the state provides in exchange for war sacrifices, nor the factors determining those variations. To this end, this article further develops the concept of convertibility—the ability of groups to convert the power they acquire from military service into valuable social rewards in the civilian sphere. It is argued that variations in the value of rewards are best determined by their convertibility, which is highly affected by the level of militarization in a society through five variables: level of threat, military participation ratio, republicanism, convergence between military and civilian organizations, and identity building.
2011, Social Science Research
Employing inductive framing analysis and Entman's theory of framing, this project examines how the U.S. mainstream media defined Iraq‐Afghanistan Veterans and their problems. This study used inductive framing analysis with a sample of 180 articles from seven major newspapers and two wire services. The findings revealed five dominant frames: broken veteran, disoriented veteran, fighting the bureaucratic enemy, overwhelmed family, and the financial hardship frames. Two counter‐frames that attempted to challenge the dominant frames were identified: moral obligation to help and the healing counter‐frames. The finding of this research indicates that while news frames of Iraq‐Afghanistan Veterans skew negative, these news frames are not as negative as one might suspect. Thus, veterans' groups, government agencies, and interested political actors need to sponsor counter‐frames that emphasize the stability and employability of these veterans.
Drawing from 26 life story interviews of recent American veterans, this paper analyzes the identity struggle faced by soldiers returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom and reentering the civilian world. Instead of examining veterans’ problems as a consequence of post-combat mental illnesses such as PTSD and major depression, we analyze the contrast between the participants’ identities as soldiers and their identities as civilians. We find that the postwar transition causes adverse mental health effects that stem from contrasts between the military’s demands for deindividuation, obedience, chain-of-command, and dissociation and the civilian identity expectations of autonomy, self-advocacy, and being relational. Veterans’ reintegration to civilian society is further hindered by a culture that is perceived (by veterans) as having decreased understanding of the soldier/veteran experience itself. These identity conflicts—what we term warring identities—have an important yet understudied effect on veterans’ combat-related mental health problems.
2014, Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 15332985 2013 854286
In reviewing Military Cultural Reform in ABCA countries, two things are apparent. First, a significant amount of all social policy reform has occurred in the last 15 years; and second, all four countries have tended to be reactive to public opinion, rather than proactive. Some armies are more vocal about cultural change than others. Common to all however, is the practice of bringing about change in response to an atrocity. Typical across the group are incidents of sexual misconduct, torture, bullying, and alcohol abuse; and in the fallout after these incidents, there was a perceived or reported public outcry, and the armies answered the public by commissioning investigations. There is less evidence of organic reform, or peculiar issue identification. Chiefly, each armed force, perhaps through a shared, high operational tempo, has enacted a considerable amount of cultural change in a short time.
2010, American Sociological Review
This applied research project (ARP) describes civil-military issues written by European authors in the journal Armed Forces & Society. The journal Armed Forces & Society is an international interdisciplinary journal. Since September 11, 2001 and the Paris attacks of 2015, Europe and its militaries have been more engaged in warfare and peacekeeping missions. As a result, it is important and timely to examine the current discussion around European military studies written by scholars. A description of the content in Armed Forces & Society journal provides insight to this question. This study organizes civil-military issues using a classification system developed by the European Research Group on Military and Science (ERGOMAS). The organization is an international academic association that created working groups to deal with issues between the military and society. Each working group studies a particular topic. This study created categories based on these working groups to describe the content by European authors in Armed Forces & Society since 2011. Content analysis is performed using four topics: 1) recruitment and retention, 2) military families, 3) gender and the military, and 4) veterans and society). Armed Forces & Society articles published between 2011 and 2015 (N=38) were used in the analysis. The findings reveal little discussion among European authors on the four topics. Among these four topics, the most frequently discussed were military families and recruitment and retention. Overall the topics are underdeveloped and as such, require more discussion. Recommendations are made to enhance future contributions to the Armed Forces & Society journal.
2015, In “Interrrogating the Perpetrator,” eds. Cathy J. Schlund-Vials and Samuel Martinez, special issue, International Journal of Human Rights, 19(5):555-571.
2013, Social Work in Mental Health
2012, Training and Education in Professional Psychology
2012, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Dissertation title: An Embedded Study to Identify Barriers that Discourage Military Veterans from Taking full Advantage of the G.I. Bill While the Title II: Education portion of the G.I. Bill is a major incentive for many who have entered the military since 1944, many veterans do not always use these benefits to continue their education. The literature indicates a gap where student military veterans lack the knowledge in what barriers may exist in the bill that may prevent them from attaining their educational goals if and when they decide to begin using the bill. There is an abundance of research to suggest that these barriers do exist and that student military veterans continue to have problems maneuvering around these barriers to successfully complete their educational goals. The purpose of this study is to identify barriers that are experienced by some military veterans and explore what influences these barriers may have had on these veterans in making their decisions towards their educational goals. The data for this study will draw from student veterans in two major universities located in the Pacific Northwest. The population for this study will include military veterans who are honorably discharged from the military and qualify to use the bill but never used or finished using the bill. An embedded survey design will be the primary analytic method. Survey data will be collected while students attend two universities.
Over the past decade, the American armed services have witnessed a near-constant stream of so-called ethical lapses. Spanning rank, specialty, and service, these " lapses " have given rise to a flood of criticism by journalists and piercing calls for reform from politicians. In response, American military leaders have pointed to the paired concepts of profession and professionalism as the solution. In this article, we use classical conceptualizations of the military profession to resituate the problem of ethical lapses as instead one of the three fault lines of the contemporary American military profession, unfolding alongside crises in military expertise and identity. The three fault lines reveal at once the large scale of the challenges facing the American armed services and our very limited social scientific understanding of those problems. We end by emphasizing the need for future research to establish an updated empirical baseline for theories of the military profession in America. Over the past decade, the American armed services have witnessed a near-constant stream of so-called ethical lapses from the abuse of detainees by enlistees to cheating on nuclear power training exams by junior officers to drunken and disorderly behavior by general and flag staff officers. Spanning rank, specialty, and service, these
The United States Armed Services has produced some of the finest men and women soldiers in history. After their service, some pursue institutions of higher learning to meet the needs of their continued excellence. Some colleges and universities have failed to meet the slightest requirements of the veteran student: understanding, compassion, respect and college credits for military training and experiential learning. The chapters inside this capstone confirms that veterans must be accepted as a very important part of the campus population. When veteran’s complete college and graduate, they have strategically and successfully completed another important undertaking. To look at a veteran-friendly college or university campus would be to see the support and the ideas of the men and women who have served the United States during time of war and in peace. This should be one of the many essential focuses of campus administrators, staff, faculty and other students. We know that college has long been a place where young people develop an identity and a purpose in life. Students (non-veterans), start to develop their identity during college, but for older students, like veterans, with lifetime and wartime experience, those lessons have already been learned amid a procession of struggle and sacrifice that's impossible to reproduce in a classroom or an internship. Veterans are natural leaders with the leadership-chip inherently built inside them. For a college or university campus to overlook this important social feature would be a tragic loss for the veterans and the community. If veterans are not recognized on college campuses, then how can a college or university begin to build community towards being veteran-friendly? Research Methodology: Action Research, Field Study, Interview, Program Evaluation Recommended Citation: Allen, Donald W-R, "What Makes a Veteran-Friendly College or University Campus?" (2016). School of Education Student Capstones and Dissertations. Paper 4226. http://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/hse_all/4226
2008
The NNOMY Reader is a document comprised of the most relevant writings and subject areas that have come out of the U.S. based counter-recruitment movement of the last 15 years and reflect the primary challenges that have shaped this activism. The chosen writings were authored by principal contributors and activists of the U.S. based “CR movement” and reveal how they engaged to effect legislative protections, gain access to schools, and develop strategies to present a counter-narrative to recruitment age youth, different and more complete than that of military recruiters of the Department of Defense while working inside the confines of national laws, equal access rules, and school district regulations.
2010
This article offers a case study of the militarization of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). First, we portray the landscape of militarization of public education through the example of CPS. Second, we situate the militarization of schools within the current charter school movement. Third, we explain th impact of militarization on youth and critique the view that military academies and programs are appropriate as public educational models. Fourth, with a lengthy appendix, we provide readers with tools to work against the militarization of public schools within their communities.
Gay men and lesbians are marginalized in most areas of society. Throughout history, they have served in all branches of the military. As the largest U.S. provider of mental health serving veterans, all social workers are likely to encounter veterans that identify as gay or lesbian. This article provides social workers an overview of the description of gay and lesbian military members and introduces readers to areas of consideration when working with this population.
2010, Journal of Traumatic Stress
The authors examined rates of and factors associated with postdeployment treatment-seeking in a panel of 424 National Guard soldiers who spent 16 months in Iraq. Soldiers completed a self-report, mailed survey 3- to 6-months after returning home. Approximately one third of respondents reported postdeployment mental health treatment. Those who screened positive for mental health problems were more likely to indicate that they had received treatment compared to those who screened negative, but over one half of those who screened positive were not engaged with mental health treatment. Variables related to reported treatment receipt included positive attitudes about mental health therapies, having been injured in-theater, illness-based need, and having received mental health treatment while in-theater. Implications and future research directions are discussed.
This is the second of a two-part analysis of gener- ational wartime mental health crises. Wartime mental health crisis has been defined as a sentinel public health event where- by mental health demand of the military population demon- strably exceeds the mental health system’s capacity to provide adequate access to timely, effective mental health and social support services during and/or after a period of war. The pres- ent study extends an analysis that substantiated a twenty-first century wartime crisis by investigating the hypothesis of re- petitive mental health crises following every major American war since the 20th century. Compelling evidence of recurring generational crises is established by citing first-hand primary sources from wartime cohorts. A clear trend emerged, possi- bly linking the pattern of wartime crises with generations of self-reported failure to learn well-documented war trauma les- sons (e.g., the need to adequately plan, prepare, and train for inevitable war stress casualties). The authors discuss the need for further research that would elucidate so-called "psychiatric lessons of war^ and contribute to the prevention of cyclic crises.
2011, Psychological Services
Prosecutors are handling increasing numbers of criminal cases concerning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). How these prosecutors handle such cases may reflect their attitudes toward veterans or offenders with PTSD. In turn, their attitudes may affect perceptions of blameworthiness, as well as negotiations about sentencing during the pre-trial stage. The present study investigated the effect of a defendant’s military experience and mental health status (i.e., PTSD) on prosecutors’ offers at the pre-trial stage and their ratings of the defendant’s blameworthiness. Prosecutors’ offers were more lenient to stress-disordered veterans; specifically, they were offered more diversion programs compared to veterans without PTSD and to other offenders with PTSD. Prosecutors also perceived veterans and those with PTSD as less criminally culpable; they also empathized and identified more with veterans and those with PTSD than non-veterans and offenders without PTSD.
2015, Criminology
2011, Journal of rural social sciences
Latino combat soldiers report both higher prevalence and greater overall severity of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms than non-Hispanic Caucasians. However, these veterans face unique social and cultural barriers to accessing treatment for PTSD that distinguish them from their non-Hispanic white counterparts. Latino veterans who reside in rural settings face additional socio-cultural and structural impediments, in that they are likely to reside far from VA (Veterans Administration) medical facilities, have limited access to public transportation, and hold more conservative views toward mental health treatment than those residing in urban locales. However, little is known about the unique individual, sociocultural, and structural barriers to treatment faced by rural Latino veterans. This paper synthesizes the separate mental health and treatment-seeking literatures pertaining to Latinos, rural populations, and veterans, with the goal of identifying fruitful areas of con...
2014, Puerto Rican Soldiers and Second-Class Citizenship Representations in Media (Avilés-Santiago, 2014).
This chapter traces the representation of Puerto Rican soldiers in TV and Film from 1954 - 2012 in the context of scholarship produced around the cultural history of representations of Puerto Ricans in the media.
This is a copy of my already published book on PTSD, "The Lonely Road Home."
2011
Increased veteran enrollment in universities warrants the examination of the challenges of students transitioning on campus. In this phenomenological, mixed methods study incorporating reverse culture shock theory and student engagement, four research questions are explored. Do current Colorado veteran residents obtain degrees at the same rate as non-veterans? Do current Middle East veteran students experience socio-cultural transition challenges associated with reverse culture shock? What type of student involvement is experienced by this group? What are veteran students’ suggestions to improve the college transition experience? In the quantitative study, U.S. Census and American Community Survey data for Colorado veterans and education attainment are examined. Colorado veterans do not complete baccalaureate degrees at the same rate as nonveterans. In the qualitative study, questions on reverse culture shock and the challenges of reintegration and transition are combined with questions on student involvement. From the responses, key words and phrases are extracted, clustered, reduced, validated, member checked, and then re-validated using current qualitative data software. Veteran students experience something similar to culture shock or reverse culture shock and have little involvement and engagement with non-veteran students and in the university community and campus activities. Finally, this study offers student suggestions aligned with suggestions for behavioral adaptation and of the American Council on Education highlighting improvement strategies, and the proposal of a new term, Converse Culture Shock, a term which emphasizes magnitude and impact of the out-of-culture return experience, differentiating this group from other sojourners.
Bringing the draft back in the US should re-establish the link between the citizenry and the government in terms of waging war. The draft can also repopulate the military with the proper balance of volunteers and conscripts.