Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society

Last updated
Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society
Formation1960
FounderMorris Janowitz
HeadquartersLoyola University Chicago
FieldResearch
President and Chair
Laura L. Miller
Executive Director
Ryan J. Burch
Secretary
Brenda L. Moore
Treasurer
Robert A. Vitas
Website http://www.iusafs.org/

The Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society (IUS) is a professional organization and forum for the exchange and evaluation of research on military institutions, civil-military relations, and military sociology with a broad emphasis across the social and behavioral sciences. The IUS is intended to be interdisciplinary in nature and has around 600 fellows in over 35 countries, who hold varying occupations in the military, academia, and the private sector. [1]

Contents

History

The Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society was founded in 1960 by Morris Janowitz, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. The IUS is centrally located at Loyola University Chicago and has a Washington D.C. region, a Rocky Mountain region, and a Canada region. The stated mission of the IUS is to provide independent, interdisciplinary analysis of military institutions, which "requires intellectual collaboration across university, organizational, disciplinary, theoretical, and national lines." [2] The IUS publishes the journal Armed Forces & Society, which has been in circulation since 1974. The IUS hosts international conferences every other year, which provide for the presentation and evaluation of new research on civil-military issues. [3] [4]

President and Chair

From left to right: Charles Moskos, Sam Sarkesian, David Segal, Jay Williams Four IUS Presidents.JPG
From left to right: Charles Moskos, Sam Sarkesian, David Segal, Jay Williams

The following persons are or have been President and Chair of the IUS:

Scholarly Study of IUS

Burk (1993) explored the origins of the study of military sociology with a specific emphasis on the works of Janowitz and a historical review of the first 20 years of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. [8]

Related Research Articles

Military science is the study of military processes, institutions, and behavior, along with the study of warfare, and the theory and application of organized coercive force. It is mainly focused on theory, method, and practice of producing military capability in a manner consistent with national defense policy. Military science serves to identify the strategic, political, economic, psychological, social, operational, technological, and tactical elements necessary to sustain relative advantage of military force; and to increase the likelihood and favorable outcomes of victory in peace or during a war. Military scientists include theorists, researchers, experimental scientists, applied scientists, designers, engineers, test technicians, and other military personnel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">W. I. Thomas</span> American sociologist (1863–1947)

William Isaac Thomas was an American sociologist, understood today as a key figure behind the theory of symbolic interactionism.

Ius or IUS may refer to:

Morris Janowitz was an American sociologist and professor who made major contributions to sociological theory, the study of prejudice, urban issues, and patriotism. He was one of the founders of military sociology and made major contributions, along with Samuel P. Huntington, to the establishment of contemporary civil-military relations. He was a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago and held a five-year chairmanship of the Sociology Department at University of Chicago. He was the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Janowitz was the vice-president of the American Sociological Association, receiving their Career of Distinguished Scholarship award, and a fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Association. Janowitz also founded the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, as well as the journal Armed Forces & Society. He was an early founder of the field of military sociology. His students, such as David R. Segal, Mady Segal, and James Burk are prominent and influential military sociologists.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Military recruitment</span> Recruitment for military positions

Military recruitment refers to the activity of attracting people to, and selecting them for, military training and employment.

Charles Constantine Moskos, Jr. was a sociologist of the United States military and a professor at Northwestern University. Described as the nation's "most influential military sociologist" by The Wall Street Journal, Moskos was often a source for reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and other periodicals. He was the author of the "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy, the compromise which allowed homosexual service members to serve, but prohibited them from acknowledging their sexual orientation from 1994 to 2011.

Christoph Beat Graber (*1960) is a Swiss legal scholar and professor of legal sociology with particular focus on media law at the University of Zurich since 2015. He was previously a founding member of the Faculty of Law at the University of Lucerne and a consultant to various Swiss federal offices and the OECD on communication, cultural and copyright law issues.

<i>Armed Forces & Society</i> Academic journal

Armed Forces & Society is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic publication that publishes articles and book reviews on a wide variety of topics including civil–military relations, military sociology, veterans, military psychology, military institutions, conflict management, peacekeeping, conflict resolution, military contracting, terrorism, gender related issues, military families and military ethics. It is the official publication of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society and published by SAGE Publications. The current editor-in-chief is Patricia M. Shields.

James Barrett Jacobs was the Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts at New York University School of Law, where he was a faculty member since 1982. He was a specialist in criminal law, criminal procedure, and criminal justice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Military sociology</span> Subfield within sociology which studies the military as a social group

Military sociology is a subfield within sociology. It corresponds closely to C. Wright Mills's summons to connect the individual world to broader social structures. Military sociology aims toward the systematic study of the military as a social group rather than as a military organization. This highly specialized sub-discipline examines issues related to service personnel as a distinct group with coerced collective action based on shared interests linked to survival in vocation and combat, with purposes and values that are more defined and narrow than within civil society. Military sociology also concerns civil-military relations and interactions between other groups or governmental agencies.

The American Evaluation Association (AEA) is a professional association for evaluators and those with a professional interest in the field of evaluation, including practitioners, faculty, students, funders, managers, and government decision-makers. As of 2014, AEA has approximately 7057 members from all 50 US states and over 60 other countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Civil–military relations</span> Study of the relationship between a countrys armed forces and civil society/government

Civil–military relations describes the relationship between military organizations and civil society, military organizations and other government bureaucracies, and leaders and the military. CMR incorporates a diverse, often normative field, which moves within and across management, social science and policy scales. More narrowly, it describes the relationship between the civil authority of a given society and its military authority. "The goal of any state is to harness military professional power to serve vital national security interests, while guarding against the misuse of power that can threaten the well-being of its people." Studies of civil-military relations often rest on a normative assumption that it is preferable to have the ultimate responsibility for a country's strategic decision-making to lie in the hands of the civilian political leadership rather than a military.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reuven Gal</span>

Reuven Gal is an Israeli social and clinical psychologist, a social activist and entrepreneur, researcher, author and consultant in the field of behavioural, communal and social sciences.

Unit cohesion is a military concept, defined by one former United States Chief of staff in the early 1980s as "the bonding together of soldiers in such a way as to sustain their will and commitment to each other, the unit, and mission accomplishment, despite combat or mission stress". This concept lacks a consensus definition among military analysts, sociologists and psychologists, however.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patricia M. Shields</span> Political scientist

Patricia M. Shields is a Regents' Professor in the Political Science Department at Texas State University. Since 2001 she has been Editor-in-Chief of the international and interdisciplinary journal Armed Forces & Society. She is also a Contributing Editor to Parameters: The US Army War College Quarterly and the Section Editor of the Military and Society section to the Handbook of Military Sciences. Shields is notable for her publications focusing on research methods, civil military relations, gender issues, pragmatism in public administration, peace studies, and the contributions of Jane Addams to public administration and peace theory. She received a BA in Economics from the University of Maryland - College Park, an MA in Economics and a PhD in Public Administration from The Ohio State University.

John Allen Williams, also known as Jay Williams, is a professor emeritus of political science at Loyola University Chicago and is the former chair and president of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society (2003–2013). He serves on the editorial board of the National Strategy Forum in Chicago, is editor of the National Strategy Forum Review, and is on the board of directors for the Pritzker Military Museum & Library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam C. Sarkesian</span> Scholar on the military (1927–2011)

Sam Charles Sarkesian was a prominent scholar of civil-military relations and national security, who published numerous books and articles concerning various topics in these areas. He was also a member of the military, serving in Korea and Vietnam. He retired from the U.S. Army as a Lieutenant Colonel. He was also a professor emeritus of political science at Loyola University Chicago, where he was the chair of the political science department and influenced many new scholars in the field. He also served as the second president of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces & Society (IUS). His memory is strong in the IUS, as many of its fellows were his students.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David R. Segal</span> American sociologist (born 1941)

David R. Segal is an American sociologist who specializes in civil-military relations, military sociology, and military organization, in the tradition of Morris Janowitz. He is a distinguished scholar-teacher and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Maryland. He is the founding director of the Center for Research on Military Organization, and is a former president of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, as well as a former editor of the journal Armed Forces & Society. He has also served as president of the District of Columbia Sociological Society and of the Section on Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution of the International Sociological Association, and chair of the Section on Peace, War, and Social Conflict of the American Sociological Association. He attended public school in Brooklyn, New York, and earned his B.A. from Harpur College, Binghamton University. He earned a PhD in sociology at University of Chicago. He began his academic career in the sociology department at the University of Michigan in 1966, and served as director of graduate studies, associate chair of the department, and director of the Center for Research on Social Organization. in 1973, he took a leave of absence from Michigan to direct the sociology program at the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Burk</span> American sociologist (born 1948)

James S. Burk is an American sociologist and professor at Texas A&M University. He is most notable as a scholar of military sociology, political sociology, and the history of sociology. He is a central figure in the study of civil-military relations in democratic societies.

References

  1. http://www.iusafs.org/about/AboutUs.asp, website accessed 5/16/11
  2. http://www.iusafs.org/history/history.asp Archived 2009-10-07 at the Wayback Machine , website accessed 5/16/11
  3. http://www.iusafs.org/conferences/conferences.asp, website accessed 5/18/1
  4. Burk, James. (1991)"Introduction: A Pragmatic Sociology" in On Social Organization and Social Control by Morris Janowitz, The University of Chicago Press, p17.
  5. http://www.iusafs.org/history/history.asp Archived 2009-10-07 at the Wayback Machine , website accessed 5/18/11
  6. "Faculty Profiles". faculty.txst.edu. Retrieved 2023-10-17.
  7. "The IUS President". Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. Retrieved 2023-10-17.
  8. Burk, James. (1993). Morris Janowitz and the Origins of Sociological Research on Armed Forces and Society. Armed Forces & Society .Vol. 19 no. 2 167-185 - http://afs.sagepub.com/content/19/2/167.short