Military Ethos Research Articles

Understanding posthumous sperm retrieval during war through a terror management theory perspective

Terror Management Theory (Tmt, solomon et al., 1991) claims that individuals use three anxiety buffer mechanisms to regulate their death awareness – cultural worldviews, self-esteem, and proximity seeking. In this article, we use these three TMT anxiety buffers to explain the phenomenon of posthumous sperm retrieval, requested by spouses or parents, usually of young soldiers who died during their military service. Whereas this phenomenon has been known for some time, it increased dramatically in the initial days following the massacre conducted by the Hamas terrorist organization in Israel on October 7, 2023. We claim that this was an immediate reaction to this terror event, which posed a direct, existential threat to those who were exposed to the massacre and the soldiers who defended the country, but also to the entire Israeli society, as well as for Jews around the globe. We use interpretive phenomenology to qualitatively examine the phenomenon of retrieving sperm from dead young men, analyzing the requests to retrieve sperm posthumously as a sign of the need to provide these young men with symbolic immortality, on both personal and national levels. We integrate this explanation with the military ethos and the tendency of Israeli society to endorse familyist and pronatalist values to expand our understanding of this contemporary phenomenon in Israel.

Transformational leadership, well-being, morale, and readiness: The mediating role of empowerment

ABSTRACT Transformational leadership is embedded in the value system of the Canadian military ethos. Research suggests that transformational leadership can be viewed as a form of empowering leadership facilitating empowered psychological states among their followers, which in turn, enhances their performance, wellbeing, and engagement. The current study examined the associations between transformational leadership and Canadian Armed Forces members’ psychological distress, morale, and pre-deployment readiness and the mediating role of psychological empowerment in these relationships. A path analysis model of the data collected through a pre-deployment survey completed by Canadian Armed Force (CAF) members (N = 2,391) revealed that transformational leadership was associated with lower psychological distress and greater morale and these relationships were partly explained by increased feelings of empowerment, namely higher levels of autonomy, competence, and meaning. Furthermore, transformational leadership was also associated with higher perceptions of pre-deployment readiness, and this was partly explained by increased feelings of meaning and competence. The results of this research suggest that transformational leadership is an effective strategy to bolster psychological resources and readiness in the CAF.

Significance of Ahiara, the Ahiara Declaration and Its Implications for the Biafra-Nigeria Civil War, 1967-1970

Ecology always played important roles in historical determinism; and basically, also as landscapes for defense, assaults and as (motivational) totems. Since the 1970s, certain questions have engaged Igbo historians, anthropologists/ethnographers and commentators in recent histories of Igboland nexus the factors that accounted for the significance of Ahiara in Mbaise, for it to have been chosen as historically (ethnically) strategic for the Ahiara Declaration by Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu in 1969. The paper undertook to discern the geographical importance of Ahiara vis-à-vis other similarly regarded territorial patches, such as the choice of Perestroika and Glasnot by Mikhail Gorbachev and why the Kenyans have always dominated the Marathon races in Olympiads; and in pronouncements made in ecological environments, such as Ahiara, Arusha in Tanzania, Kenya and Russia. Subsidiary questions raised were: Did Ahiara command a centrality in location in Igboland that it was chosen? Were the Ahiara a martial people that their territory was preferred to those of the Abam, Ngwa and Ohafia, who had evolved celebrated military ethos? Perhaps, the findings were convincing to have compelled Ojukwu to choose Ahiara for his “win-the-war’ manifesto. The paper concluded that the choice of Ahiara was, comparatively, apt; and portrayed an essential historicality. But the Ahiara Declaration was made at the twilight of the Republic of Biafra and could not have been, unarguably, useful for the war effort. Oral interviews were conducted while primary sources predominated in writing this paper.

Воинский этос GI в культурном коде США (на материале прецедентных текстов армейского идиома)

The paper scrutinizes professional image of the American serviceman’s world from the axiological perspective. It focuses on US national values as well as the moral and ethical image of the military cohort. The object of the study is the axiosphere of the US military society expressed in the official register of the military sublanguage. The subject area of our research embraces precedent texts of military officialese, which set forth the basis of military ethos. This research aims to identify unique value orientations attributed to the US military cohort’s members. On the one hand, these values constitute the professional ethos and, on the other hand, however, they collide with generally accepted axiological standards of the civilian mother culture. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the fact that the comparison of maternal culture values and the values of its socio-professional group of service members is conducted for the first time. Despite the abundance of publications on this issue (mainly works in sociology, psychology, medicine, and history), the phenomenon of the identity of a serviceman’s professional ethos is still insufficiently examined from the standpoint of linguocultural studies and sociolinguistics. The research findings demonstrated a partial identity of the value orientations compared. The professional environment reveals a number of values that are largely not inherent in the “civilian world”. The latter include messianism, a sense of belonging to the highest values of the nation, sacrifice of military service, collective spirit (esprit de corps), and others. This paper represents the first attempt to dissect the axiosphere of the GI through textual works of officialese. The contrastive analysis allowed us to identify the key values declared by the US defense establishment.

Fighting for Legitimacy

This article examines the links between alternative spirituality and Israeli militarism in the context of the confrontations between new religious and spiritual movements and Israeli society and state, and the efforts of such movements to gain legitimation through participation in republican citizenship practices and adaptations of Israeli cultural values. The article discusses the representation of alternative religious and spiritual movements as a danger to the Israeli Army by anticult movements, and the response of new religious movements to such accusations. Through the study of two case studies, Emin and Anthroposophy, the article examines the adjustments of religious and spiritual doctrines and practices of new religious movements to Israeli military ethos, the role of militarism in the endeavors of such movements to legitimize themselves through participation in Israeli republican citizenship practices, and the appropriations and interpretations of the Israeli military ethos by Israeli alternative spiritual movements.

Moral education in the military: Optimal approach to teaching military ethics

This paper aims to explain the inadequacies of the traditional approach to moral education in the military and present an optimal approach to teaching military ethics. Author provides a short review of key notions, the subject, and the importance of military ethics in armed forces, followed by a short analysis of both traditional approaches - aspirational and functionalist - to teaching military ethics identifying their weaknesses. Author concludes that it is necessary to transcend the traditional approach and include both moral philosophy and character development in moral education in order to develop a military ethos based on solid ethical foundations. Finally, author offers a solution to the identified problem and proposes an optimal approach to military ethics education, which includes both basic formal education in moral philosophy and meaningful integration of ethics in various other classes and forms of military training, in order to develop the desired ethics-based military ethos.

Religion and war: A synthesis

ABSTRACT This chapter draws on the papers in this volume to help develop a global comparative perspective on religion and war. It proceeds by establishing two forms of religiosity: immanentism, versions of which may be found in every society; and transcendentalism, which captures what is distinctive about salvific, expansionary religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. This chapter does not suggest that either immanentism or transcendentalism enhance the likelihood of collective violence in themselves. It does, however, argue that these types of religiosity are distinctive in how they drive war, allow enemies to be identified, and rationalize or legitimize collective violence. Some of the paths by which societies may become more bellicose (prone to war) or martial (heavily shaped by a military ethos) are sketched out and certain elective affinities between imperial expansion and transcendentalist systems are proposed. The place of Confucianism in this interpretative schema is discussed towards the end. Many scales of comparison are considered throughout, especially whether the categories of ‘transcendentalism’, ‘monotheism’ or ‘Christianity’/‘Islam’ afford the most comparative insight in understanding patterns of violence.

"For each time I remind myself of you, neither do I eat, nor do I drink, but I cry": family relations of Roman soldiers according to papyri

The unique conditions of everyday life as well as special military traditions and mentality made family relations of Roman soldiers quite specific. Besides, the "marriage ban" or the lack of legal recognition of marriage contributed to the difficulties of militaries’ family life. Nevertheless, according to the data of epigraphy and papyrology, family played a key role in the life of Roman militaries. In this paper, the author's attention is focused on the information provided by papyrological sources. The object of the study is the papyrological letters of Roman soldiers to relatives. The subject of the study is the feelings and emotions of soldiers expressed in letters in relation to their family. The author also notes some practical issues of military family life, in particular, the problem of placing family members of a soldier on the territory of a military camp. Among the results of the study, it is worth noting the special sentimentalism of soldiers' letters revealed by the author. This feature should not be considered as a mere formality. The large numbers of emotional phrases are explained by the context of the era when most of people began to reflect on their duties and everyday being. In particular, they thought about the proper relationships between parents and children, husband and wife. Interestingly, one of the moral obligations in the relationships between close people became the presence of love. Moreover, this love should have been expressed in letters. Thus, despite the influence of the military ethos and other factors on the marital life of military personnel, the latter remained part of Roman society, for which family relations were one of the main values.

Tożsamość płciowa w narracjach żołnierek Armii Czerwonej, uczestniczek II wojny światowej

Gender Identity in the Narrative of Women-Soldiers Serving in the Red Army during World War II The analysis of gender identity is based on the narratives of women who volunteered to serve in the military after the start of World War II and fought as soldiers in the Red Army. Forty years after World War II, Svetlana Alexievich conducted interviews with women veterans, which she published in the book War’s Unwomanly Face. Their memories of wartime and post-war period were analyzed from the perspective of their gender identity, i.e. the ability to reconcile the role of a woman determined by their biological sex with the role of a soldier determined by the circumstances. The interpretation of this problem offered in the paper is based on developmental psychology theories of Erik Erikson, James Marcia, Daniel Levinson, and Jeffrey Arnett, and the sociological perspective on identity. Selected narratives from Alexievich’s reportages are analyzed focusing on identification and interpretation of different themes, which are assessed according to their relevance to the understanding of the process described. The narrators were only 16–20 years old at the time of joining the military and they were still at the stage of identity moratorium. It required a lot of determination for them to become a soldier. Their identity as a soldier was their assumed identity, defined by Marcia as ideological or professional engagement without completing the period of exploration. Women were not welcome in the army, they suffered because of logistical shortcomings, but they still supported all of the units, became officers and military leaders, and were awarded medals for their valor, courage and reliability. After the war, they were socially rejected and condemned and they needed to process their identity, i.e. reject their military ethos in order to strengthen their sense of being a women. Based on Arnett’s concept one can conclude that their “in between”period of identity exploration was determined by external events and social relations.

Professional military instructor identity in the South African National Defence Force

In 2015, the chief of human resources at the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) ordered the improvement of the instructional quality and military ethos of military instructors. This article, based on a comprehensive study in this regard, reports on the perceptions of a sample of military instructors in the SANDF on the existence of a construct, known as the professional military instructor identity and its effect on military ethos and instructional quality. A qualitative approach was followed, using an interpretivist/constructivist paradigm, involving data collection by means of a focus group discussion and expert interviews and using thematic networks analysis as data analysis method. A conceptual framework for the professional military instructor identity, consisting of sub-identities, influencing factors and identifying indicators, was constructed. Findings suggest that the professional military instructor identity is not recognised as a construct in the SANDF; however, the elements are known, although only vaguely. The findings also support the view that this situation may have affected the current declining military ethos and instructional quality of military instructors. It is concluded that the institutionalisation and popularisation of the professional military instructor identity, as well as professional recognition of military instructors in the SANDF, could improve the current situation. Keywords: instructional quality, military instructor, identity, military ethos, MPII

Православный кардиогнозис русского народа как основа богатырства (на материале «Дневника писателя» Ф.М. Достоевского)

The term “cardiognosis” is a neologism at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. F.M. Dostoevsky used in the “Diary of a Writer” and in the Great Pentateuch its Russian counterpart - “heart knowledge”. The chronologically explainable absence in the heritage of the classic of the lexeme under study, based on the addition of Latin roots, does not at all contradict the fact that F.M. Dostoevsky made an invaluable contribution to the intellectual tradition of studying cardiognosis that has developed in Russia. The creator of the “Diary of a Writer” invariably correlated this category with folk Orthodoxy. He saw the “heart knowledge of Christ” as the most effective and infallible way of attaining God. Dostoevsky developed such a perception as a result of his deep immersion in the context of the Bible and patristic literature. The writer was convinced that the cardiognostically conditioned faith of the Russian people is a guarantee of their special - world-unifying - destiny in the future. Nevertheless, he did not idealize popular types, noting their susceptibility to temporary obsession. However, this feature, according to F.M. Dostoevsky, does not exclude the openness of the heroic path to every Russian Vlas. In the “Diary of a Writer”, the occasional semantic content of the category “heroism” (“bo-gatirstvo”) is especially expressively explicated. It is understood not as an indication of a military ethos, but as a service to God in a broad sense. The basis and inspiration of heroism (bogatirstvo), according to F.M. Dostoevsky, is precisely cardiognosis. The writer is sure: a heart that “contains God” can transform into a “better person” even one who has sinned, but who repented in time. On the pages of the “Diary of a Writer” F.M. Dostoevsky not only defines the “best people” of the past of Russia (“Tikhon, Monomakh, Ilya...”), but also admires their followers from the 19th century. He considers those contemporaries who are ready to sacrifice themselves for the protection of brothers in Christ (General Chernyaev, Sophia Lurie, Foma Danilovich Lotaryov) as the incarnators of spiritual heroism (bogatirstvo). Dostoevsky's causal comprehension of the categories “cardiognosis” and “heroism” (“bo-gatirstvo”) showed a significant trait of the Russian national character, demonstrated the writer's faith in the saving mission of the God-bearing people.

Perseverance of the Eagle-Jaguar Military Ethos in Sixteenth-Century New Spain

Perseverance of the Eagle-Jaguar Military Ethos in Sixteenth-Century New Spain

Культурфилософское измерение воинского этоса в контексте искусства жизни и практик ведения войны

The purpose of the study is to explicate the cultural dimension of the military ethos that is being formed in the context of the practice of warfare. The methodological basis of the research is represented by the integration of a cultural-philosophical approach and interdisciplinary social philosophy. Research results are to substantiate the fact that the military ethos is constructed not only by war, but also by the development of a peaceful life. The military ethos is considered from a rather high moral perspective as a spiritual phenomenon, largely associated with the upbringing of the human race. In this regard, courage and duty are considered as key components of the formation of a military ethos, and various aspects of a military ethos that are characteristic of its individual carriers are identified. It is concluded that the military ethos is largely formed as a result of the elimination of class contradictions, contributing to the egalitarianization of modern culture.   Prospects of the study are associated with further consideration of the military ethos in the context of social construction and prevention of military conflicts.

‘Like the Wild Beast after the Taste of Blood’: War, Hunting, and Racialised Discourse in Southern Africa in the 19th Century

Historians of colonial conquest have explored the emergence of various manifestations of racialised discourse about Africans during the numerous colonial wars in Southern Africa. To a slightly lesser extent they have also examined the impact of colonial conquest on the environment. The interconnectedness of the two has been less fully examined. One of the consequences of colonial expansion in what is now South Africa’s Eastern Cape province was the emergence of a distinctive military discourse on Africans in general and the Xhosa in particular. Another was the destruction of large mammals previously endemic to the area. Hunting was part of the dominant masculine military ethos and the colonial record is replete with numerous examples of the close connection between colonial wars and hunting. The same record also contains accounts blaming indigenous people for the decline in wild animals – often simultaneously detailing the mass slaughter of animals by the narrators. This article argues that military attitudes to fauna and to indigenous people were interconnected and fed into a racialised discourse that had an impact beyond the military.

Pacifist utopias: humanitarianism, tragedy and complicity in the Second World War

Pacifist utopias: humanitarianism, tragedy and complicity in the Second World War

Review

Review

Special Concerns in Military Families.

Military cultural competence has been recognized as an important factor to delivering effective care to service members, who are a distinct population with unique exposures, and thus with different clinical implications-though only recently has the military service been recognized as a cultural identity that can impact treatment (Meyer et al. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 18:26:1-8, 2016). Competencies within this field do not share a universal definition but have been recognized by the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP) to include four key components: (1) military ethos, (2) organization and roles, (3) military stressors and resources, and (4) treatment, resources, and tools (Atuel & Castro Clin Soc Work J. 46:74-82, 2018). This article summarizes research literature published in the last 6years addressing common features and health needs of military families with the goal of improving military cultural competence. This includes recognizing that (a) The military carries its own culture as evidenced by its particular traditions, beliefs, language, and set of guiding principles (Sanghera Optom Educ J Assoc Sch Coll Optom. 42:8-16, 2017) and (b) military families-defined in this paper as active duty service members, their spouses, their children, and civilian warfighters in the form of National Guard and Reservists (NG/R)-face unique stressors as they access health care either in military treatment facilities (MTFs) or in civilian settings. Given the broad and unshared definition of military cultural competence, the CDP's framework for understanding military culture helped shape the focus of our review into literature addressing military stressors and resources, with a particular interest on the impact of deployment, reintegration after deployment, interfamily relationships strained by military service, mental health concerns related to military families, and the vulnerabilities of civilian warfighters. A 2018 demographics profile revealed there were 1.3 million active duty service members, with 605,677 spouses and 981,871 children (Department of Defense, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Community Family Policy (ODASD (MC&FP)). 2018). Concerningly, military families exhibit above-average mental health issues-defined in this review to include increased susceptibility to mental health diagnoses and hospitalizations, worse academic achievement in their children, and higher rates of child maltreatment-and challenges related to military service such as frequent relocations and deployments, geographic isolation from social/support network, financial stressors, worries about infidelity, sexual trauma, and child maltreatment. The military has been described as the most engrossing and demanding institution in American society. Our review shows that military families exhibit above-average mental health issues, thought to be related, at least in part, to the challenges of frequent relocations and deployments. The implications for this are broad, given that 8% of the USA has served in the military, and a third is directly related to a service member (Meyer et al. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 18:26:1-8, 2016) This article describes unique challenges military families face and their impact on the service member, their spouse, and their children.

DICHOTOMOUS DYADS OF PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS AS A MEANS TO EXTEND KEY VALUES OF THE MILITARY SUBCULTURE

This paper dwells on the worldview specifics of the military subculture representatives as reflected by dichotomous dyads of phraseological units. Given the phraseological fund is the main material for analysis of a national mindset specifics, the authors emphasize that ethnic phraseology and socially-marked military phraseology have a great deal in common. Phraseological imagery makes it possible to consider peculiarities of the military personnel’s worldview, to reveal moral attitudes and values of the military. Contemporary linguistics stresses out the need for a comprehensive study of the military subculture mentality as an integral part of the national culture. This issue has defined the authors’ aspiration to record the system of spiritual and moral dominants of the military ethos on the basis of socially-marked dichotomous dyads of phraseology. The cognitive field of “War” military idiomatics includes phrases reflecting ideals and anti-samples of military subculture, the spectrum of approved and reprehensible behavior, as well as military lore singularities. The national language phraseological units, extending key values of the military subculture as a nuclear component of the military society, register professional dominants and obvious anti-values of the military milieu. This article concludes that socially-marked phraseological units with special symbolic potential possess explicit evaluation and expression, and reflect stereotypes of mass linguistic consciousness.

Концептуальные особенности французского военного песенного дискурса (корпусное исследование)

This paper presents a corpus-based empirical research, which uncovers the key concepts structuring the French military song discourse. We view this type of discourse as an integral element of military discourse containing institutional and non-institutional segments. The actualization of statutory relationships is the most striking example of institutionalization. Therefore, we have started our research from the hypothesis that the officially regulated (statutory) and less regulated parts of the military song discourse may manifest some conceptual differences. The selection of this subject is determined by its contribution to understanding the French military's cultural peculiarities, as well as by the lack of exploitations regarding the French military song discourse. Within the contemporary cognitive paradigm, the designatum is regarded as a pointer to the concept, which allows grasping a concept globally, without reconstructing its elements. Thus, the analysis of lexemes frequency may serve to identify the inherent concepts structuring some kind of discourse. Using a freely distributed textometric platform TXM (version 0.7.9), we have created a linguistic corpus of 462 texts of French service songs totaling 88305 tokens. Then, we have divided our corpus into two parts, depending on the statutory belonging of the texts. The statistical scores were calculated by applying the hypergeometric probability distribution law. The analysis of statistically significant lemmas has permitted to draw the lexical profile of each part and to identify thereby the most specific concepts. Moreover, we have complemented our research by routine frequency and contextual analysis in order to reveal the additional basic background concepts. Our study leads us to the conclusion that the French military song discourse foregrounds 8 main concepts, but the conceptual structure of each part reveals some differences due to the specifics of the institutional requirements and the military ethos.

SUBMARINOS E SUBMARINISTAS

A capacidade de operar invisível e silenciosamente torna os submarinos uma das armas mais valiosas do mundo contemporâneo. Possuir uma força de submarinos poderosa é uma demonstraçāo da existência de um Poder Naval forte e estruturado. Contudo, grande parte do valor de um submarino reside nas pessoas que o tripulam, assegurando o correto e oportuno funcionamento dos sistemas. Considerando que muitas atividades nele realizadas são de extrema complexidade e interdependentes, cada membro da tripulação tem um papel relevante a ser desempenhado. Assim, faz-se o seguinte questionamento: Em que medida os estressores devidos às condições e à organização do trabalho em submarinos provocam sofrimento psíquico nos tripulantes, apesar da compensação exercida pelo "ethos militar", sendo este um conceito que envolve a dedicação, o espírito de equipe e a disciplina, e do qual resulta uma maior resiliência. Em face do exposto, o presente artigo buscou analisar as condições e a organização de trabalho no ambiente confinado de um submarino, visando estimar o impacto delas sobre o comportamento dos sujeitos. Para atingir tal objetivo, utilizou-se a Escala de Avaliação do Contexto de Trabalho (EACT), que é composta pelos fatores organização do trabalho, condições de trabalho e relações socioprofissionais e a Escala de Avaliação dos Danos Relacionados ao Trabalho (EADRT) que fazem parte do Inventário sobre Trabalho e Riscos de Adoecimento (ITRA), além de terem sido realizadas entrevistas não estruturadas. Como resultado, obteve-se a percepção de que o ethos militar favorece o profissional submarinista a apresentar um forte espírito de cooperação e abnegação, que o habilitam a superar desafios por meio da contínua preparação e capacitação. Houve uma baixa percepção da existência de agentes estressores no momento da pesquisa, o que permite concluir a presença de estratégias adequadas de enfrentamento (coping) que, alinhadas ao ethos militar proporcionam um melhor modo de lidar com esses estressores.