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The Military: More Than Just a Job?
Provides the defense professional with a solid foundation on which to base organizational and personnel policies while describing the realities of life in today's military.
324 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1988
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January 22, 2026
This collection of papers offers valuable into the study of the military and of contemporary warfare. The author was an influential sociologist who researched the impact of marketization and egalitarianism upon the American armed forces. The military: more than just a job? is recommended for the reader interested in topics like conflict, professionalization and conscription. Charles Moskos’s results are useful to understand similar changes in different societies, either because common causes were present, or owing to imitation.
The military: more than just a job? is an anthology published in Romanian, twenty years ago. Its title is inspired by a famous thesis and a book co-authored by Charles Moskos, that is important even today. The editors managed a good selection, that comprises ideas about the military as an organization including the aforementioned ones, alongside a wide range of topics resuming decades of study. This review focus on the former.
Charles Moskos studied the oscillation of the US military between an institution and an economic occupation. His approach was empirical, not normative, and he tried to grasp the consequences produced by the suspension of the draft and the establishing of a volunteer force. He designed these two alternatives as Weberian ideal-types, who are produced according to concepts like legitimacy, role, evaluation, compensation and so on. The occupational model sees the military as being justified as a job, similar to the civilian ones in terms of compensation, assessment or revenue.
Another line of research was about the postmodern army. The idea was inspired by the security changes that followed the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union and the intensification of globalization that accompanied these events. This concept was also developed by a Weberian approach, that distinguished the modern, late modern and the postmodern. The latter depends on defining threats in terms of terrorism and communitarian conflicts, on smaller number but professional soldiers, on peacekeeping and related type of missions, and on a multidimensional role for the officers.
Charles Moskos approach was complex. He studied the integration of African Americans, women or gay persons in the US military, the role that spouses and husbands played or the relation of organizational structure and operations. The use of ideal-types may lead to oversimplification and to confusion and the strength of the tendency towards the occupational model can be exaggerated. The ideas present in The military: more than just a job? inspired other researches and can be useful even if the strategic context was changed and major interstate conflicts have returned.
The military: more than just a job? is an anthology published in Romanian, twenty years ago. Its title is inspired by a famous thesis and a book co-authored by Charles Moskos, that is important even today. The editors managed a good selection, that comprises ideas about the military as an organization including the aforementioned ones, alongside a wide range of topics resuming decades of study. This review focus on the former.
Charles Moskos studied the oscillation of the US military between an institution and an economic occupation. His approach was empirical, not normative, and he tried to grasp the consequences produced by the suspension of the draft and the establishing of a volunteer force. He designed these two alternatives as Weberian ideal-types, who are produced according to concepts like legitimacy, role, evaluation, compensation and so on. The occupational model sees the military as being justified as a job, similar to the civilian ones in terms of compensation, assessment or revenue.
Another line of research was about the postmodern army. The idea was inspired by the security changes that followed the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union and the intensification of globalization that accompanied these events. This concept was also developed by a Weberian approach, that distinguished the modern, late modern and the postmodern. The latter depends on defining threats in terms of terrorism and communitarian conflicts, on smaller number but professional soldiers, on peacekeeping and related type of missions, and on a multidimensional role for the officers.
Charles Moskos approach was complex. He studied the integration of African Americans, women or gay persons in the US military, the role that spouses and husbands played or the relation of organizational structure and operations. The use of ideal-types may lead to oversimplification and to confusion and the strength of the tendency towards the occupational model can be exaggerated. The ideas present in The military: more than just a job? inspired other researches and can be useful even if the strategic context was changed and major interstate conflicts have returned.
Displaying 1 of 1 review