Byrne, Lorcan (2024) Warrior Networks: Elite Soldiers and their Transition to Civilian Life. PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.

Preview

Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

The aim of this research is to explore the transition of Special Forces soldiers from elite military units to civilian life. There is a large social-scientific literature on transition, which emphasises adjustment challenges and negative outcomes for mental health and violence. But what factors determine successful transition? A number of recent studies conclude that successful transition is a matter of “cultural competences,” but the term culture is deployed without analytical precision. Moreover, other social-scientific studies worry about the excessive power of “culture” in the form of informal networks and guilds, which may well be the source of the competences that lead to success. The scholarly discussion about transition from military to civilian life, then, is dominated by anthropological concerns and disciplinary concepts – most obviously culture and its synonyms – but no reference is made to anthropological theory or to ethnographic research. This research is an anthropological exploration of the cultural space between the military and civil society. It is grounded in an ethnographic study that tracks the transition of individuals from a comparative sample of key military units. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, the focus is on military-civil fields, on habitus, and on capital, in order to develop a more nuanced, anthropological understanding of “cultural competence”. The project also makes an empirical contribution by focusing on the understudied world of elite Special Forces. As yet, there has been no in-depth study of the transition of soldiers from this elite and high-stakes world to civilian roles. Over the lifetime of this project, I will follow the transition of individuals from several units, focusing on field, habitus and capital, to provide an anthropological perspective on military-civil transition

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Keywords:	Warrior Networks; Elite Soldiers; Transition; Civilian Life;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Anthropology
Item ID:	19076
Depositing User:	IR eTheses
Date Deposited:	17 Oct 2024 13:02
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

Repository Staff Only(login required)

Item control page

Downloads

Origin of downloads