Towards a Soldier Based View in Research on The Military: An Empathetically Critical Approach
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Article
Towards a Soldier‐Based View in Research on The Military:
An Empathetically Critical Approach
Tine Molendijk * and Jori Pascal Kalkman
Faculty of Military Sciences, Netherlands Defense Academy, 3509 AA Utrecht, The Netherlands
* Correspondence: t.molendijk@mindef.nl
Abstract: The military has long been a topic of interest in the social sciences. However, to date,
military studies tend to take an overly researcher‐oriented viewpoint rather than actually engaging
with the ‘native’ experience of the soldier. This article intends to reorient military studies to a per‐
spective that encompasses the lived and embodied worldviews, actions, and experiences of military
personnel. Reviewing existing research on the military, it identifies two dominant approaches—a
functionalist and a ‘condemnatory critical’ approach—which, despite important differences, share
an ‘etic’ viewpoint. Subsequently, it proposes an alternative approach that includes ‘emic’ attention
to soldiers’ lifeworlds and comprises an empathetically critical approach. This new line of scholar‐
ship also involves empirical redirection. At least five major themes merit empirical attention: mili‐
tary identity, boredom and thrill, humor, violence and death, and homesickness for war. Moreover,
the proposed reorientation has theoretical and methodological implications, including ontological
and epistemological reconsideration towards critical realism, the development of an interdiscipli‐
narity perspective, and new methodological approaches such as basenographies, visual data, and
fictional novels by veterans. These novel empirical, theoretical, and methodological venues are val‐
uable not only for research on the military but for all fields of study that are dominated by an etic
approach. They contribute to a more scientifically holistic perspective that includes and takes seri‐
ously the experiences and meaning making of the people being studied.
Keywords: ethnography; military; interdisciplinarity; humor; boredom; emic
Citation: Molendijk, Tine, and Jori
Pascal Kalkman. 2023. Towards a
Soldier‐Based View in Research on 1. Introduction
The Military: An Empathetically The military has long been a topic of interest in the social sciences. Initially concerned
Critical Approach. Social Sciences 12: with the armed forces as an institution in relation to society (Huntington 1957; Janowitz
51. https://doi.org/10.3390/
1961; Moskos 1976) and human resources management issues such as cohesion, morale,
socsci12020051
and unit leadership (Caforio 2006; Ouellet 2021; Shils and Janowitz 1948), researchers
Academic Editor: Nigel Parton have increasingly directed attention to the operational level of military practice and the
personal experiences of soldiers (Brønd et al. 2021; MacLean and Elder 2007; Williams et
Received: 16 November 2022
Revised: 5 January 2023
al. 2016). Still, to date, military studies tend to take an overly researcher‐oriented view‐
Accepted: 16 January 2023
point rather than actually engaging with the ‘native’ experience of the soldier.
Published: 17 January 2023 Sociological, organizational, and anthropological research on the military, although
different in many respects, share a lack of serious consideration of soldiers’ life worlds.
The majority of sociological and organizational research on the military departs from
functionalist questions on the effectiveness and efficiency of military activities (Ouellet
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Li‐
censee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
2021). In doing so, it approaches military personnel as resources or assets whose adequacy
This article is an open access article can be improved with changes in military management, while the military institution and
distributed under the terms and con‐ its objectives are uncritically taken for granted (McCann 2017; Ouellet 2021). Anthropo‐
ditions of the Creative Commons At‐ logical research, instead, is generally focused on exposing forces and norms in the military
tribution (CC BY) license (https://cre‐ that are considered destructive (Lutz 2009; Price 2011), but it often fails to take seriously
ativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). the personal views of soldiers who do not share the researcher’s criticism. Such research,
Soc. Sci. 2023, 12, 51. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12020051 www.mdpi.com/journal/socsciSoc. Sci. 2023, 12, 51 2 of 15
which might be called ‘condemnatory critical’, uses soldiers’ stories as sources of insight
into the military institution, which is denounced a priori, and lacks actual interest in the
soldiers’ perceptions beyond this purpose (Mohr et al. 2021; Sørensen and Weisdorf 2021).
Thus, both lines of research focus on the significance of military practices in a re‐
searcher‐oriented sense, while the meaning and purpose felt by soldiers themselves tend
to be disregarded or readily reinterpreted in etic terms. In ethnographic terms, this would
be labeled in terms of a difference between the ‘etic’ standpoint (involving the analytical
explanations of the researcher) and the ‘emic’ viewpoint (life as experienced and de‐
scribed by the members of a community themselves) (Eriksen 2001). The emic–etic dichot‐
omy is well‐known in anthropology, introduced by Marvin Harris (1976). While a tradi‐
tional distinction, it seems helpful to identify gaps in current research and embark on new
frontiers.
Military personnel face existential questions and puzzling circumstances to be
grasped emotionally and ethically, but in the dominant research approaches their chal‐
lenges become either problems to be solved to increase performance or evidence of the
military’s immorality. Our article intends to reorient military studies to a perspective that
encompasses soldiers’ personal experiences and soldiers’ own meaning making of their
experience, thus attending to issues that, to date, have remained blind spots in military
research in the social sciences. We propose to maintain the valuable etic lens but introduce
an emic viewpoint as well to produce a scientifically holistic perspective that we describe
as an ‘empathetically critical’ approach.
Our research contributes to the literature in several ways. First, we distinguish two
dominant approaches in military research—the abovementioned functionalist and con‐
demnatory critical approaches—which, despite important differences, share a purely etic
approach. We show how these approaches have left areas unexplored, both in terms of
research topics and analysis. Subsequently, we propose an approach that centers on the
lived and embodied worldviews, actions, and experiences of military personnel and thor‐
oughly analyzes the emic meanings thereof before—or without—narrowing down the
analysis to what they mean to realizing given etic objectives. This, we propose, can be
made possible with an empirical focus on the lifeworlds and stories of military personnel
who are working at the frontlines of psychosocially and ethically extreme contexts facing
life‐threatening situations, senseless violence, and intense human suffering.
Specifically, we identify five major empirical foci that can form the foundation of this
new line of scholarship. First, soldiers’ and veterans’ self‐images and identities during and
after leaving service. Second, the daily, informal lives of soldiers in operational contexts
often characterized by boredom and activities to distract from boredom. Third, the role of
humor in military daily life, especially gallows humor, cynicism, dry humor, and self‐
deprecation, which are typical for soldiers. Fourth, the experience of constant life‐threat
and the visceral, existential confrontation with violence and death. For many soldiers, this
is not heroic or brave, but not always disturbing either. Fifth, the experience of ‘homesick‐
ness’ for war, which may seem illogical to external observers but is widely reported. We
close with a discussion of the implications and potential of our proposed reorientation,
arguing that this research agenda requires ontological and epistemological reconsidera‐
tion, interdisciplinarity, and new methodological approaches.
2. The Etic Approach of Functionalist and Condemnatory Critical Research
While the literature on the armed forces in social sciences is varied and rapidly ex‐
panding, our review uncovered two central lines of research that have a fundamental etic
viewpoint in common. First, there is a line of research on the military with predominantly
sociological and organizational roots that we call ‘functionalist’ because studies adopt an
instrumentalist approach and view research outcomes as a means to improve military
outcomes. This research sees extreme circumstances as problems to be solved and focuses
on performance, efficiency, and progress rather than on meaning, morality, and experi‐
ences. For instance, there are influential studies that aim to identify the origins of militarySoc. Sci. 2023, 12, 51 3 of 15
failures and disasters or instead try to unravel the building blocks of military safety cul‐
tures (Snook 2002; Catino and Patriotta 2013). By extension, there is extensive research on
military effectiveness in high‐stake situations, where scholars emphasize the importance
of gaining an appropriate crisis understanding to ensure highly reliable operations (Weick
and Roberts 1993; Fraher et al. 2017; Ben‐Shalom et al. 2012). There is also extensive re‐
search on military socialization through which new recruits are disciplined and reshaped,
positively affecting their organizational commitment and hardiness under fire (Caforio
2018; Dalenberg 2017). Another strand of studies in this line of research discusses the im‐
portance of team cohesion when military units operate in dangerous environments and
debate how it enables collective achievements (Shils and Janowitz 1948; Wong et al. 2003;
Ben‐Shalom et al. 2005). All these studies, in different ways, offer insights that help to
boost military effectiveness and performance during operations.
High military performance is especially challenging in the context of great societal
changes that have unfolded over the past few decades. These changes have had significant
repercussions for the armed forces and therefore attracted a great deal of attention from
military sociologists in particular. One example of these changes is that operational con‐
texts have evolved with the ‘end of the Cold War, the disappearance of the “focal enemy”,
the emergence of the “new wars”, the transformation of the regimes in the Eastern Euro‐
pean countries, [and] the revival of ethnic and religious differences’ (Caforio and Nuciari
2018, p. 616). Armed forces clearly had to adapt to these new theatres of war, which are
widely believed to require decentralized and more flexible ways of working as well as
more collaboration with private companies to acquire high‐tech equipment and coopera‐
tion with civilian organizations to ensure integrated responses to complex conflicts (Riet‐
jens and Bollen 2008; Manigart 2018). This awareness features, among others, in research
on netcentric warfare, which describes organizational interventions for agile performance
by military forces operating in the information age, characterized by rapid information‐
sharing and a radical decentralization of power (Alberts and Hayes 2003). Another signif‐
icant societal change is that the ‘new military’ has seen the end of conscription and the
emergence of all‐volunteer forces, in which diversity of personnel is pursued to ensure
operational effectiveness during missions, but in which racism and gender discrimination
also remain persistent bottlenecks that need to be resolved to improve operational out‐
comes (Dharmapuri 2011; Heinecken and Soeters 2018). Societal change, in this line of
research, is seen as a challenge to armed forces, for which consultants and scholars try to
find solutions to maintain solid military performance inspired by a functionalist mindset.
Second, there is a line of research we call ‘condemnatory critical’. Whereas the afore‐
mentioned functionalist studies build on sociological and organizational research, the
studies that fall in this category are usually conducted by anthropologists. Different from
the critical stance that is characteristic of sound scientific research in general, condemna‐
tory critical research denounces the armed forces invariably and a priori, as the few an‐
thropologists attempting a more nuanced approach have signaled in their own discipline
(Hautzinger and Scandlyn 2013; Mohr et al. 2021; Molendijk 2021; Simons 1999; Sørensen
and Weisdorf 2021). Aware of early anthropology’s engagement in colonialism and impe‐
rialism and the discipline’s more recent involvement in military interventions, most an‐
thropologists avoid the military altogether. The few who do not are careful to make the
distinction between anthropology ‘for the military’ and ‘of the military’, referring to ‘when
anthropology is on a military mission’ and ‘when it is on another one’ (Lutz 2009, p. 374).
The definition of anthropology of the military as being on a mission, too, is telling. Indeed,
anthropological research of the military is usually understood as ‘an engagement with
and interrogation of institutionalised structures and pressures that explicitly denounces
militarisation, militarism, and all things military’ (Mohr et al. 2021, p. 601). Calls to fellow
anthropologists to direct more attention to the military have therefore been phrased as ‘to
illuminate militarism, the source of so much suffering in the world today’ (Gusterson
2007, p. 165).Soc. Sci. 2023, 12, 51 4 of 15
Accordingly, most critical research (although not always condemnatory) has focused
on the destructive effects of military actions on local civilians, shedding light on the daily
life of war for civilians (Simons 1999), the politics of violence (Scheper‐Hughes and Bour‐
gois 2004), the representation of violence (Whitehead 2004), war’s influence on everyday
life in its aftermath (Das 2007), post‐war collective trauma and memory work (Gusterson
2007) and communal reconciliation and resilience (Granjo and Nicolini 2006; Kienzler
2008; Summerfield 2004). The military as such—at least the (post)modern military—has
long escaped the ethnographic gaze. It was only around the turn of the millennium that a
number of critical scholars grew interested in violence within the armed forces. Focusing
on often extreme cases—or extreme imaginations of these cases—they tried to unravel
how military training transforms civilians into ‘killing machines’ (Bourke 1999; Grossman
1995; Verrips 2004; Winslow 1999). The start of the Global War on Terror increased schol‐
arly concern with the ‘own’ armed forces, ushering in unprecedented interest in actual
military operations. In particular, researchers began to critically deconstruct legitimizing
discourses and power dynamics surrounding western military interventions (Gusterson
2007; Lutz 2002) and debate the use of ethnographic methods and anthropological exper‐
tise by military and intelligence organizations (Gill 2007; Lucas 2008; Price 2011). With
exceptions, only in recent years, soldiers’ personal experiences have been attracting seri‐
ous attention in this strand of academia. In particular, ethnographic researchers have
turned to military trauma with the aim of de‐medicalizing and re‐contextualizing soldiers’
suffering, yet again often as a critique of western military endeavors and their devastating
effects (Lutz 2009; MacLeish 2018; 2021; Meagher 2014; Wiinikka‐Lydon 2017). Accord‐
ingly, military servicemembers sometimes speak with the frustration of ‘misguided aca‐
demics’ who criticize ‘the conduct of operations from the safety of their universities’,
while critical researchers ‘bemoan the fact that [military] practitioners often fail to fully
think through the problems they claim need to be solved’ (Mosser 2010, p. 1078).
3. The Blind Spots of the Etic Approach
The studies summarized above are all valuable in their own right. Yet, the two lines
of research both leave—and produce—one major blind spot. When a soldier tells a story
about their military deployment, research ‘for’ the military readily refracts the story into
analyses of issues such as recruitment, unit cohesion, and combat readiness, while re‐
search ‘of’ the military tends to refocus to the wider historical and political context of the
soldier’s experience. In neither case is the story central to the study.
To be sure, the division of research for/of the military is simplified and thus inevita‐
bly unsatisfactory, as Lutz, who coined the division, admits herself. Nonetheless, at least
in part, it seems to have become real in its consequences. Researchers ‘for’ the military
have to be careful not to sabotage future research activities with too critical analyses (given
that many militaries already are difficult to access), whereas researchers ‘of’ the military
constantly have to make sure they are sufficiently critical to avoid charges of military co‐
optation (Gray 2018; Mohr et al. 2021; Pedersen 2021; Sørensen and Weisdorf 2021). In any
case, despite their differences, the two approaches share a preoccupation with pre‐set etic
propositions, preventing soldiers’ emic viewpoints from really entering the researcher’s
frame. Soldiers’ actual, personal experiences are considered interesting only insofar as
they offer insight into the issues predetermined by the researcher.
As a result, ‘the social scientific study of militaries‐in‐action seems to be “stuck” with
tools developed in the heyday of conventional wars’ such as ‘cohesion and leadership,
communication and unit dynamics, or discipline and motivation’ instead of attending to
the dynamic realities of today’s operations (Brønd et al. 2021, p. 3). More generally, current
military research keeps itself oblivious to soldiers’ minds and experiences. The studies
referenced below are examples of insights researchers gather when taking seriously sol‐
diers’ lifeworlds. In many etic‐focused studies, instances of violence are readily inter‐
preted as extreme and distressing, while emic research shows that soldiers, as long they
can justify the violence, may experience these instances as ‘another day at the office’ and,Soc. Sci. 2023, 12, 51 5 of 15
in fact, as motivating rather than demoralizing (Eikenaar 2023; Molendijk 2021; Neitzel
and Welzer 2012). Additionally, when soldiers talk about their combat experience as a
source of pride and honor, from a condemnatory critical standpoint, they would be seen
as ‘bearers of a false consciousness, as victimized, exploited, or duped by the state’ while
emic researchers ‘try to understand their agency and the complexity of their motivations’
(Kanaaneh 2005, p. 263; see also, e.g., Dyvik and Greenwood 2016; Grassiani 2018). At the
same time, in functionalist research, trial‐and‐error activities in operational settings are
usually only analyzed in terms of their importance for learning, while they may trauma‐
tize soldiers when experienced as profoundly senseless (Molendijk 2021). Besides disre‐
garding emic interpretations, current research excludes emic topics. Consider sensory
confrontations with the sight, sounds, and smells of death. Or simply, the daily life of
military deployment. These are significant topics in soldiers’ personal stories (De Rond
and Lok 2016; Gray 1959; Neitzel and Welzer 2012), but they receive marginal attention in
current research on the military.
Thus, while an etic viewpoint is useful in itself, current research on the military is
overly etic in its functionalist and condemnatory critical approaches. It begs the question:
What would we find if we adopted an emic perspective? Neitzel and Welzer, who ana‐
lyzed unique covert recordings of German soldiers in World War Two, put it as follows.
‘The brutality, harshness, and absence of emotion of war are omnipresent, and that is what
is so disturbing for us reading the dialogues today’ (Neitzel and Welzer 2012, p. 20). Yet,
they add, ‘in order to understand the world of these soldiers, and not just our own world,
we need to get beyond such moral reactions’ (Neitzel and Welzer 2012, p. 20). In a similar
vein, Vietnam veteran and novelist O’Brien observes that a ‘true war story’ does ‘not in‐
struct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain
men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe
it’ (O’Brien 2015, p. 68). It is worthwhile, then, to seriously direct our attention to soldiers’
actual experiences and the questions they start asking themselves during deployment or
never ask at all, instead of—or at least before—reformulating their experiences as issues
of combat performance or institutional oppression.
An emic perspective enables soldiers to tell their own stories, so they can share what
is important to them rather than to us as researchers. It will improve our understanding
of how soldiers experience and attribute meaning to their work and actions, as well as
how they shape and view their daily lives in contexts that seem to defy normality and
order (Morey and Luthans 1984). This is particularly important because soldiers are bur‐
dened with one of the most elementary tasks of our society: we expect them to intervene
when crises and wars threaten our lives and what we hold dear. Even so, genuine interest
in soldiers’ own stories is rare, so it is doubtful to what extent scholarly treatises describe
the actual experiences of ordinary soldiers themselves. In other words, the emic perspec‐
tive requires researchers to step away from popular preconceptions and their own as‐
sumptions and prejudices and let soldiers tell them about their own lives. It is scientifically
unfortunate, therefore, that the emic perspective has been overlooked or even explicitly
denounced. Notably, there is no such thing as ‘the’ soldier’s emic perspective. On the con‐
trary, national militaries and their personnel are highly heterogeneous in terms of their
demographic characteristics, social positions, and viewpoints (as is the case for all ‘com‐
munities’). In fact, this is a major insight researchers gather when seriously delving into
soldiers’ lifeworlds. An emic perspective will reveal the heterogeneity of the military pop‐
ulations that researchers investigate and shed light on the specific ways in which they are
heterogeneous.
To be sure, we do not propose to replace the etic with the emic approach. Quite the
opposite. As is the case for the distinction between the research of/for the military, the
emic/etic‐division is a heuristically helpful opposition, but in practice, an undesirable di‐
chotomy (Morey and Luthans 1984). Demanding researchers to choose between the two
would be presenting them with a counterproductively false dilemma with fallacious in‐
terpretations of critique and empathy. A critical etic study of military behaviors is not onlySoc. Sci. 2023, 12, 51 6 of 15
possible from an antagonistic stance towards the military, nor does empathic interest in
the emic worlds of soldiers automatically imply uncritical absorption of their views.
Following Mohr, Sørensen, and Weisdorf, we maintain that ‘the critical potential of
an ethnography of things military lies precisely in its insistence on empathic engagements
with things military’ (Mohr et al. 2021, p. 606, italics added). That is, thorough scientific
examination of the military necessitates ‘empathic engagements’—which are not the same
as sympathy or compassion—that are ’attentive to the complexities of military lifeworlds’
(Mohr et al. 2021, p. 610). At the same time, a thorough scientific examination requires a
critical attitude. This is not an attitude aimed at ‘freeing the subject from supposedly un‐
just forms of governance by resolving pre‐identified ills and wrongs’ but an approach of
‘moving in and out of [soldiers’] frames of reference’ (Mohr et al. 2021, pp. 610–11). Doing
so can lay bare dissonances between different frames of reference and thus enables under‐
standing and an informed kind of critique. An empathically critical attitude, then, requires
a combination of the etic and emic approaches.
4. Five Empirical Foci to Move towards Including a Soldier‐Based View
An analytical expansion to the emic perspective needs to be accompanied by an em‐
pirical focus on the soldiers ‘on the ground’. Military personnel working at the frontline,
in particular, operate in psychosocially and ethically extreme conditions involving life‐
threatening situations, senseless violence, and intense human suffering. Specifically, there
are five major empirical foci that can help build a soldier‐based field of study. The studies
cited below are examples of the kind of emic research we advocate.
4.1. Military Identity
First, soldiers’ identities undergo profound changes at different moments: when they
first join the armed forces and are subjected to socialization processes, when they have
their first battle experience and engage the enemy in combat, and when they leave military
service and attempt to transition back into civilian life. From a functionalist perspective,
military identity influences perceived military competences and skills, so it serves as a
predictor of military performance (Johansen et al. 2014), but it also predicts post‐military
reintegration success (Kleykamp et al. 2021). Yet, this view on military identity does not
do full justice to how military personnel conceive of themselves. In fact, military identity
constructions and transitions to different self‐conceptions often feature prominently in
books of veterans and are heavily charged with emotions (Hunniecutt 2017). Based on his
Navy experience, Herman Wouk (1951, p. 483) writes that the ‘old personality didn’t fit;
it seemed as odd as an outdated fashion’. More dramatically, Remarque (2013, p. 92) con‐
cludes that being a soldier is tragic: ‘We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old
men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost’. Military self‐
conceptions shift in salient ways during service and come to fully define personnel. Only
a few studies do justice to identity struggles and the multi‐dimensionality of soldiers’
identities, even though this topic is of major importance to soldiers themselves. These
studies demonstrate soldiers’ arduous attempts to become true soldiers, enabled by mili‐
tary rites of passage (Thornborrow and Brown 2009; Winslow 1999), how their embodied
experiences create particular brotherhoods and other intimacies (Adey et al. 2018; Dyvik
and Greenwood 2016), the ways in which new military identities may come to battle with
previous civilian self‐conceptions rather than replacing them (Bica 1999; Finley 2011), and
the post‐military transition to civilian life and related reconsideration of the military iden‐
tity (De Reuver 2022; Grimell 2015; Wilson‐Smith and Corr 2019). Involving research ‘close
encounters with military institutions and the people who inhabit them’ (Basham and
Bulmer 2017, p. 60), these studies also show that soldiers’ identities are multifaceted and
their creation always includes the production of new others as well, including compli‐
cated distinctions between soldiers and civilians, men and women, tough combat soldiers
and inferior ‘armchair warriors’, dedicated military veterans and ‘whining’ victims, the
political department of defense and the military brotherhood, and enemies and non‐Soc. Sci. 2023, 12, 51 7 of 15
combatants (De Reuver 2022; Grzebalska 2021; MacLeish 2013; Molendijk 2021). These
identity struggles and changes touch soldiers to their core and are often deeply felt.
4.2. Boredom and Thrill
Second, the daily, informal lives of soldiers in operational contexts are primarily
characterized by boredom and activities to distract from it. While high‐intensity, danger‐
ous operations are spectacular and anticipated, soldiers spend most of their time waiting
and training (Mæland and Brunstad 2009). To some soldiers, their deployment to mission
area may lead to disillusion, not because of the tragedies of war, but the absence of com‐
bat, shattering their warrior dreams as they wanted to be ‘tested’ in battle and sought the
thrill of the fight (Pedersen 2017). In the absence of military engagements, soldiers con‐
tinue their training and exercises but also search for alternative sources of entertainment.
This includes fitness, tanning, exchanging stories about sexual conquests, playing games
such as poker, and reading books or watching movies (De Rond 2017). Often, these dis‐
tractions are of an escapist nature and have nothing to do with the war (Laugesen 2016).
Importantly, the absence of military activities does not just produce boredom but also af‐
fects soldiers’ experiences of meaningfulness and self‐conception. The long periods of
waiting make intermittent situations of combat even more shocking and frightening. As
O’Brien (2015, p. 33) formulates it: ‘Even in the deep bush, where you could die in any
number of ways, the war was nakedly and aggressively boring. […] And right then you’d
hear gunfire behind you and your nuts would fly up into your throat and you’d be squeal‐
ing pig squeals. That kind of boredom.’ At the same time, routine, boredom, and emo‐
tional attrition can be morally numbing and make soldiers indifferent to the suffering of
themselves, colleagues, and civilians, causing harsh behavior and discourse that some sol‐
diers later regret (Grassiani 2013). As a result, violence and its injurious effects can become
as routine, boring, and normal as they can be shocking and traumatic (MacLeish 2013;
Wool 2015). Generally, the slow and dull moments during missions define military life as
much as the fights, so both deserve due attention.
4.3. Humor
Third, the role of humor, especially dark humor, cynicism, dry humor, and self‐dep‐
recation, is typical for soldiers. The scarcity of literature on this topic is particularly sur‐
prising considering the importance soldiers attach to humor, as evidenced, for instance,
in the space soldier authors devote to it in their memoirs (Nazareth 2008; O’Brien 2015;
Veldhuizen 2014). These memoirs, moreover, demonstrate striking similarities in military
humor worldwide. The few social scientific studies that write about military humor focus
on its value as a coping mechanism to deal with the circumstances in which soldiers op‐
erate and the stress and pain that comes with it (Ben‐Ari and Sion 2005; Priest and Swain
2002; Saramifar 2019; Sløk‐Andersen 2020; Ward et al. 2021). Some of these studies fur‐
thermore discuss how humor facilitates effective leadership, reproduces social norms, and
leads to both desired and unwanted mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in the military
unit (Ben‐Ari and Sion 2005; Priest and Swain 2002; Sløk‐Andersen 2020). It would be
worth further examining the propositions of these studies. Yet, it is equally important to
go beyond such a functionalist‐inclined approach and consider other aspects than the in‐
dividual and social functions of military humor. As found among inter alia slum residents
(Goldstein 2013), hospital nurses (Wear et al. 2009), and prison workers (Schmidt 2017),
long‐term exposure to circumstances of human suffering may engender cultures of absur‐
dist and gallows humor that comprise both social commentary of the political sources of
these circumstances and self‐deprecating acknowledgment of the callous, cynical person
one becomes amid such conditions. This type of observation, in which humor is under‐
stood as a mimicking reaction to ‘matters out of place’ (Goldstein 2013), has a more (post‐
)structuralist character. Examining military humor through such a lens would allow re‐
searchers to gain an intimate insight into soldiers’ experiential worlds, as well as into theSoc. Sci. 2023, 12, 51 8 of 15
ways in which soldiers subscribe to or challenge the political, cultural, and economic webs
in which their work is embedded (see also Ben‐Ari and Sion 2005).
4.4. Violence and Death
Fourth, the visceral, existential confrontation with violence and death evokes intense
emotions, such as anxiety and anger, among military personnel. Violence and death fea‐
ture in multiple forms in war. First, soldiers face life‐threatening situations themselves.
Junger (2004, p. 81) describes the soldier’s situation in his memoir Storm of Steel with this
image: ‘It is as if one were tied tight to a post and threatened by a fellow swinging a
sledgehammer. Now the hammer is swung back for the blow, now it whirls forward till,
just missing your skull, it sends the splinters flying from the post once more. That is ex‐
actly what it feels like to be exposed to heavy shelling without cover’. Similar feelings of
deadly danger and fear are also reported in semi‐autobiographical works of fiction, such
as Remarque’s (2013, p. 155) All Quiet on the Western Front: ‘A bomb or something lands
close beside me. I have not heard it coming and am terrified. At the same moment a sense‐
less fear takes hold of me. […] I tell myself that my alarm is absurd […]. It is in vain’. The
fear is intensified by the fact that the field of combat is full of uncertainties, the so‐called
‘fog of war’. Often, it is the presence of comrades alone that keeps them from succumbing
to panic and flight (Kalkman 2020). To scholars, such fear of death may easily become a
practical difficulty to be resolved in a functionalist attempt to improve combat effective‐
ness, but soldiers experience the possibility of a violent death first and foremost as in‐
tensely terrifying. Second, soldiers do not only risk being killed themselves, but they also
frequently witness dying and death of comrades. When their comrades fall, this is pro‐
foundly impactful and can make them question the point of the war and their own pres‐
ence in it, while it can also strengthen their sense of purpose (Lifton 2005; Shay 1994). The
individual confrontation with the death of a close comrade or friend has rarely been stud‐
ied in military research to date. Finally, soldiers also kill enemy combatants in turn. For
some, this is a deeply felt, morally troubling deed that is hard to process at first or at all.
It puts the relationship with the organization under pressure, particularly because armed
forces do not always offer support to cope with conflicting moral feelings (Rauch and An‐
sari 2022; De Rond and Lok 2016). However, by strictly dividing tasks and dehumanizing
victims, the organization can attempt to undercut soldiers’ sense of responsibility for their
violent actions (Kelman and Hamilton 1989). In fact, it might even foreclose soldiers’
recognition of the moral character of using violence or acting in conditions that involve
the suffering of others (Eikenaar, forthcoming). Yet, this should not draw attention from
the individual experience of fighting and may not even work for everyone involved. For
other soldiers, however, the act of violence is not as troubling. They may even enjoy com‐
bat as an opportunity to prove themselves or seek the thrill of the fight, as discussed be‐
low. The presence of violence and death is unique to the military context, and their (dif‐
ferential) impact on organizational members requires further study.
4.5. Homesickness for War
Fifth, the experience of ‘homesickness’ for war may sound counterintuitive but is
widely reported. Camaraderie and the exhilarating feeling of being alive make for good
memories, while the confrontation with vain, empty civilian life is harsh to many soldiers
upon their reintegration (Brænder 2016; Gray 1959; Harari 2008; Sørensen 2015). It is not
uncommon for soldiers to talk in deprecatory words about the vanity and corruption of
civilian life, contrasting it with the pure and neat military life (Lartéguy 2015). Many of
the soldiers of World War I ‘simply took pleasure in killing’ (Ferguson 1998, p. 358). In
general, many soldiers are attracted by ‘the delight in seeing, the delight in comradeship,
the delight in destruction’, as noted by World War II veterans and philosopher Gray (1959,
p. 28). Bar and Ben‐Ari (2005), too, have signaled that once soldiers overcome their re‐
sistance to fighting and killing, they often enjoy it. This does not mean, however, that the
feelings soldiers experience can be put down to ‘fun’. Soldiers rarely call combat ‘fun’, butSoc. Sci. 2023, 12, 51 9 of 15
rather use words such as ‘good’ and ‘unique’. Often, they describe a confluence of antag‐
onistic feelings, including fear, adrenaline, and excitement. Stories of their deployment
may, for instance, be ‘about the normalcy of cheering and laughing when seeing a blast of
fire, the piercing cries of soldiers at the loss of a buddy, the black humor used to cope with
this loss, the easy acceptance of “collateral damage” resulting from combat and, at the
same time, about profound feelings of guilt at being unable to save a child from abuse’
(Molendijk 2021, p. 135). Such stories evoke discomfort in civilians as ‘they mess up the
notions of perpetrator and victim, normal and abnormal, and good and evil’, and accord‐
ingly, they unwittingly reinforce societal imagery of veterans as crazy or at least psycho‐
logically damaged (Molendijk 2021, p. 135). Aware of this attitude in the society that was
once their home, veterans usually do not readily share their stories (De Reuver 2022; Ha‐
rari 2008; Molendijk 2021; Sørensen 2015). For these very reasons, it would be insightful if
researchers put serious effort into listening to veterans’ stories as they reminisce over their
deployments with their buddies. Among other topics, it is worth unraveling experiences
of homesickness for war and doing so without readily interpreting it in etic terms as, for
instance, a symptom of war trauma.
5. Discussion: Theoretical and Methodological Implications
Military identities, boredom and thrill, military humor, violence and death, and
homesickness are worthy empirical foci in the novel line of military research, which is
committed to thoroughly understanding soldiers’ lived experiences. Distinct from both
functionalist and condemnatory critical attitudes, the soldier‐based line of research adopts
an empathically critical approach to military phenomena, combining the etic and emic
perspectives. In addition, as we discuss below, this reorientation has even more funda‐
mental implications. For truly empathically critical research, it seems that the field of mil‐
itary studies would benefit from ontological and epistemological reconsideration, a shift
towards interdisciplinarity, and an expansion in research methods.
5.1. Ontology and Epistemology
Empathically critical research requires a shift in scientific‐philosophical underpin‐
nings, or more accurately, it calls for a middle position between the typical ontologies and
epistemologies of functionalist research and condemnatory critical research. Functionalist
research tends to be focused on behavior, which is analyzed as objectively observable var‐
iables that can be explained—and manipulated—by considering their purpose for soldiers
and/or the military organization. As such, this line of research resonates with a positivist
or at least Parsonian view of the social world as a reality existing independent of our
senses, in which researchers can discover enduring structures of (military) behavior (see
also Ouellet 2021). Condemnatory critical research, in contrast, tends to focus on subjec‐
tive experience and meaning making and, at the same time, on analyzing soldiers’ realities
as shaped by the institutional forces and cultural norms in which they are embedded.
Condemnatory critical research is based on a constructionist view of the social world as a
dynamic human construction, in which researchers unravel how (military) knowledge is
contingent on historical developments, human perception, and social experience (see also
Mohr et al. 2021). The empathically critical approach we propose takes the middle position
of critical realism, which combines a subtle ontological realism with epistemological con‐
structionism and, as such, reconciles the values of existing positions (Given 2008).
Critical realism involves a constructionist understanding of knowledge, but rather
than ending in a relativist view of the impossibility of truth, it commits to the more prag‐
matic position that although the world can only be accessed through our social construc‐
tions, it is nonetheless ‘real’ in the sense that it has an ontological status independent from
us (Elder‐Vass 2022; Kramer 2007). Consider, for instance, the difference between the sol‐
dier who feels guilty about having survived an attack while his colleague died and the
soldier feeling guilty over having been indifferent to large amounts of ‘collateral damage’
in a mission that turned out to have questionable motives. To be able to make a distinctionSoc. Sci. 2023, 12, 51 10 of 15
between the two, we cannot indiscriminately approach the two soldier’s realities as mere
variations of ‘emic’ interpretation, but neither can we simply decide whose judgments are
accurate and whose are not. We have to sincerely examine the ways in which these sol‐
diers construe and give meaning to the world, including our own ‘etic’ assessment of the
legitimacy and appropriateness of their subjectivities. In a critical realist approach, the
researcher’s etic view, as well as soldiers’ emic perspectives, are considered capable of
producing reasonable, justified, and worthwhile knowledge about the world, even though
in both cases, that knowledge is necessarily partial and fallible. Moreover, the social con‐
structions that shape and constrain knowledge (both emic and etic knowledge) are con‐
sidered reasonable, justified, and worthwhile constructions as well, as they are condi‐
tional to our knowledge and our interaction with the world (Elder‐Vass 2022; Kramer
2007). Recognizing that this critical realist position may raise concerns too (and we en‐
courage critical consideration), we postulate it is the best option to take seriously soldiers’
existential realities while acknowledging the social situatedness of their lived experience.
It is from this critical realist position that empathically critical research is possible.
5.2. Interdisciplinarity
Another implication of our proposed reorientation concerns interdisciplinarity. Since
the turn of the millennium, different scholars have encouraged interdisciplinary research
in military studies, realizing ‘that the military is a highly complex social phenomenon in
itself and one that cuts through various levels, touches several different contexts and is
thus subject to multiple processes of interpenetration’ (Kümmel 2006, p. 417). An interdis‐
ciplinary approach has come to be seen as indispensable to comprehending the ever‐in‐
creasing complexity of military affairs (Caforio 2007; Ouellet 2021). While acknowledging
that the specialized knowledge of monodisciplinary research will always continue to be
necessary for in‐depth, refined insight into specific questions, we agree that research seek‐
ing both emic and etic insight with the aim of confronting real‐world issues requires a
multifaceted and integrated approach. Nonetheless, much military research is still mono‐
disciplinary, and the work labeled as interdisciplinary is often actually multidisciplinary,
meaning that different findings and disciplinary perspectives remain distinct (Bennett
2010). Such research accordingly may produce contradictory findings which are left un‐
addressed. A mono‐ or multidisciplinary view, for example, may risk that mental health
problems are seen as either an issue of the individual soldier who needs better psychoedu‐
cation in mental coping strategies or as the result of organizational problems among
which an organizational focus on psychoeducation in which all responsibility for mental
health is placed on the soldier’s shoulders (Molendijk 2021). Or that technological devel‐
opments are studied independently of the actual humans having to put such innovation
into practice, thereby either overlooking important psychological and ethical dimensions
or identifying so many psychological and ethical objections that technological innovation
is rendered impossible (Van der Maarel et al., 2023; Rauch and Ansari 2022). An interdis‐
ciplinary approach, in contrast, combines and moreover integrates the different dimen‐
sions or at least is able to point out conflicts between them.
The potential of interdisciplinary research lies in its investigation of topics at the in‐
tersection of multiple disciplines and its synthesis of the disciplinary approaches in‐
volved. It is simultaneously attentive to both the individual soldier and the wider context
and to both internal conflicts in the mind of the soldier and organizational concerns. In
doing so, it offers unified insight, and therefore realistic insight, into the multitude of fac‐
tors that are at play in real‐world problems, including practical problems of efficacy and
existential problems of the soldier in crisis. The interdisciplinarity we envision is thus not
an abstract holism but actually a rather concrete appreciation of the complexity of real
problems in the real worlds of soldiers. Military research topics, from this perspective, are
approached as multidimensional issues that are always embedded in organizational, po‐
litical, and societal systems, which as such offer a vantage point into potential tensions at
the micro, meso, and macro levels and between these levels, which in turn are notSoc. Sci. 2023, 12, 51 11 of 15
examined from an a priori condemnatory perspective but as heterogeneous webs within
which behavior takes shape and acquires meaning.
5.3. Research Methods
A final implication of our proposed call for an empathetically critical approach is the
recognition of a need for experimentation with new research methods. A majority of stud‐
ies in military research rely on interviews, surveys, memoirs, and document analyses.
These are useful sources of data, particularly for research questions in the two schools of
thought that we identified. At the same time, they are not sufficient for an emic perspec‐
tive. New research methods, instead, can give more voice and agency to soldiers, so they
can convey the rich complexity of their work, thereby enabling military scholars to better
relate to their lived experiences. It can also give soldiers the opportunity to use methods
of communication that they find most helpful to share their message or which help them
to relay important information that cannot always be captured in words or on paper.
In addition to established forms of data collection, military scholars might benefit
from ‘basenographies’, referring to ethnographic research on military bases. Data collec‐
tion can both be conducted on domestic bases to study themes such as boredom, humor,
and the normalization of violence through training, but also on bases in mission areas to
analyze direct reactions to combat experience and how soldiers process witnessing death
and violence, and in military rehabilitation centers to explore how soldiers grapple with
extreme ruptures in their personal and professionals lives. It is noteworthy that the rare
instances of such an ethnographic study particularly highlight how soldiers are trying to
cope with facing futility, senselessness, and surreality at the same time as they are experi‐
encing normality, routine, and boredom (De Rond and Lok 2016; MacLeish 2013; Wool
2015). These are findings that deviate considerably from research outcomes based on post‐
return interviews and memoirs. Another promising direction is the use of visual data.
Soldiers will often observe intensely moving, disturbing, and ambiguous situations, but
their visual impressions cannot always be put into language. Videos and pictures can help
the researcher take the position of the soldier, so they see what they saw, thereby getting
a better feeling for the context in which the soldier operates. Visual data can be made by
the researcher, obtained from the organization, or produced by soldiers themselves. Fi‐
nally, there is value in exploring the use of fictional novels by veterans. While formal in‐
terviews and memoirs often encourage the construction of a rationalized or sanitized ver‐
sion of events, novels allow veterans to maintain the paradoxes and absurdities of military
life in their accounts. As such, soldiers can tell about their experiences with fewer (self‐
imposed) restraints and offer a more honest description of their sometimes confusing ob‐
servations, feelings, and thoughts (Kalkman 2022).
This expansion in research methods is in line with the celebrated ethnographic
method of ‘thick description’ coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973), which in‐
volves elaborate descriptions of situations combined with contextualization. It is the un‐
derstanding of people’s verbal and physical utterances in their wider social, cultural, and
political contexts. In other words, a combination of emic and etic perspectives.
As a final, practical note on methodology, it should be acknowledged that research‐
ers may be confronted with different access issues to militaries for reasons ranging from
force protection to insulating a government bureaucracy from unwelcome scrutiny. At the
same, the particular access issues that researchers may encounter are also a source of both
emic and etic data into the ways in which the military organization and/or its personnel
relate to ‘outsiders’. There are vast differences between national militaries, and issues of
access can not only hinder but also help to shed light on these differences.Soc. Sci. 2023, 12, 51 12 of 15
6. Conclusions
To date, marginal attention has been directed to soldiers’ life worlds in research on
the military. The majority of sociological, organizational, and anthropological studies on
the military are inclined towards either functionalism or condemnatory criticism and, in
doing so, take an etic approach. We propose to include an emic, soldier‐based viewpoint,
which comprises an empathetic as well as critical approach. Such an elaboration has sev‐
eral implications. Empirically, it requires attention to themes that are relevant to soldiers’
lived experiences. We identified five empirical foci, namely military identity, boredom
and thrill, humor, violence and death, and homesickness for war. Theoretically, it seems
that critical realism is the aptest ontological and epistemological position from which to
conduct empathically critical research and that interdisciplinarity is necessary to penetrate
the multidimensionality of soldiers’ experiences. Methodologically, a soldier‐based field
of study would benefit from an expansion in research methods to, for instance, basenog‐
raphies, visual data, and fictional novels by veterans.
These suggestions may apply not only to research on the military but also more gen‐
erally. The empirical, theoretical, and methodological venues proposed here are valuable
for all fields of study that are dominated by an etic approach. They contribute to a more
scientifically holistic perspective that includes and takes seriously the lived and embodied
worldviews, actions, and experiences of the people being studied.
Author Contributions: The authors contributed equally to this work. The first author took the lead
in revising the manuscript based on reviewer comments. Conceptualization, T.M. and J.P.K.; Meth‐
odology, T.M. and J.P.K.; Formal analysis, T.M. and J.P.K.; Writing – original draft, T.M. and J.P.K.
All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Data Availability Statement: No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is
not applicable to this article.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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