This textbook introduces the reader to the field of military sociology through narrative reviews of selected key studies in the discipline.

The book provides a guided introduction. In each chapter, the authors set the stage and then immerse the reader in Spotlights – that is, descriptions of essential studies that inform the discipline of military sociology. The goal is to afford readers a ready pathway into how sociologists and social scientists have thought about topics in the study of the military and war.

Topics covered in the book include:

• What is military sociology? What does it have to offer in understanding armed forces, wars, and societies?
• What basic tools are needed to ply sociological, or more broadly, social science perspectives for studying war and the military?
• What are the bio-social bases of war? What does the spectrum of such societally organized violence look like?
• How do societies raise and maintain formal militaries? What are variations in their social composition and in the profiles of civil–military relations?
• How and why is military organization and war changing so dramatically in the 21st-century? What does the future hold?

This book will be of great interest to students of military sociology, the armed forces and society, peace studies, and International Relations.