The Founding of Military Sociology: The American Soldier

Abstract

This article examines the emergence of the discipline of military sociology in the context of Samuel A. Stouffer and his project, The American Soldier. More than 200 different questionnaires and interviews with over half a million soldiers made this project the largest field research ever conducted. In this context, the study first discusses the conditions that gave rise to The American Soldier project, such as the status of sociology in the USA in the interwar period, its function and power to produce public results, and its positioning between theory and practice. Next, the study presents in general terms the agenda of The American Soldier project, its goals, and its processes. The study then evaluates the output of the project and discusses the publications that fall within the scope of social psychology and sociology according to their content. The article then evaluates the general characteristics of military and war adaptation studies, deployment and job satisfaction studies, ethnic-based research, and the deployment scoring system developed in The American Soldier alongside the findings from the project. As a result, The American Soldier project was a milestone that paved the way for the institutionalization of military sociology and prepared the birth of a subdiscipline.

Keywords

• military sociology
• samuel a. stouffer
• the american soldier
• adaptation studies
• attitude studies