|
Co-ordinator: René Moelker,
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Papers presented at the 10th ERGOMAS conference in Stockholm, June 22-26, 2009.
For more details, please contact the presenters directly.
- Helena Carreiras (
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
) & Veronica Neves (ISCTE - Lisbon University Institute, Portugal). The ‘invisible' families of Portuguese soldiers: From colonial wars to contemporary missions
- Jelena Juvan (
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
) (Faculty of Social Sciences, Slovenia). Slovene Military Families: a Gap Between "Supply and Demand"
- Camilla Kylin (
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
) (Swedish National Defence College, Sweden). Social Identity, Deployed soldiers and the reflection on the ones left behind
- Manon Andres (
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
) (Netherlands Defence Academy, The Netherlands). Reunion and reconciliation
- René Moelker (
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
) (Netherlands Defence Academy, The Netherlands). Reciprocity and support
Understanding military families requires a multidisciplinary approach with contributions from psychology, sociology, history, anthropology and more. At the same time it takes a multitude of perspectives such as the theoretical, empirical, reflective, life events (narrative) approach, national and the global. The Working Group Military Families aims to take the approaches from different disciplines and perspectives and combine them to put out a volume that enhances our knowledge and understanding of military families. The aim is to push the theory in the field a little bit further, to illustrate the topic empirically and to provide depth to our understanding by cross-national comparative analysis.
The book that will be the fruit of our labour should deal with military families in general. At least three fields of inquiry come to mind that could be constitutive of this volume. Besides these fields, there should be room for country papers that go into the specific constellation of a country.
- Part I: Greedy institutions: a state of affairs. Is the work-family rivalry still relevant as a concept of analysis? What theoretical progress have sociologists made ameliorating the concept? How is the concept of ‘greediness' connected to gendered division of labour?
- Part II: The psychology of military families. What are the stresses on military families in ‘peacetime conditions' but as well in deployment conditions? How do families cope with separation caused by deployments? How do families manage marital reconciliation? What is the effect on children?
- Part III: Social support arrangements. How is support organised before, during and after deployments. What kind of exchange relationships prove more efficient in social support: traditional arrangements, individualised exchange, generalised reciprocity or professionalised support systems. Should military commanders be more active in caring over military families? Do our military families need more attention or are we cuddling our families to death by being overprotective and non-trusting towards self-organisation.
- Part IV: Country Papers. The country papers would preferably explain the genesis of social support arrangements, the specific stresses on the military family/spouse, and the solutions that are applied in these countries to overcome specific problems.
In country papers the following points could be addressed:
- Effects of structural change on soldiers and families (downsizing, reservist/regulars, conscript systems, new missions). This question is about the way the AF seeks to change its structure to accommodate military families and also about the way military families effect the AF.
- Tensions between military organization and family (the greediness issue / work-family conflict).
- What are the stresses on the soldier and the military family? And how are these stresses dealt with?
- The history of family support systems (what is the genesis of family support systems).
- What is the structure of the family support system?
- Deployments and those left behind (if applicable): marital reconciliation, deployment and children's reactions, divorce (if numbers are available), communication (effect of e-mail, cellular phones), effect of families on operations, etc.
|
