Review: Understanding Military Culture
| Author | Dan W. Middlemiss |
| Published date | 01 June 2005 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200506000234 |
| Date | 01 June 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
j
Reviews
|
more importantly, that few of these undesirable actions were communicat-
ed to loved ones at home due to military and self-censorship. Without a link
back
to the home front, then, there can be little analysis on how these
actions,
or the fears of these perceived actions, had an impact on those at
home.
The final chapter on reintegration is also weak, and all three should
have been
dropped
or combined into a single chapter.
Despite
those reservations,
Saints,
Sinners,
and
Soldiers
is an ideal text
for
an
undergraduate
or graduate level course and for academics, but
deserves a wider audience. If that does not occur, Keshen can take some
solace
in the sound of graduate students rushing to explore and test the
assertions made in this important study.
Sleazy
makes for sensational read-
ing and, in this
case,
a significant contribution to the historiography of
Canada and the Second World War.
Tim
Cook/Canadian
War
Museum,
Ottawa
UNDERSTANDING
MILITARY
CULTURE
A
Canadian
Perspective
Allan
D. English
Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queeris University Press, 2004. xvi, 198pp.
$65.00 cloth
(ISBN
0-7735-2664-1), $27.95 paper
(ISBN
0-7735-2715-X)
While
Canadians take pride in their military as a peacekeeping
force,
they
are scandalized by the reported acts
of
military misconduct that took place in
Somalia
in the early 1990s. The former is perceived to reflect the best of
Canadian values, while the latter is disdained as being distinctly
"unCanadian." But few in Canada have taken time to ponder the extent to
which Canada's national culture shapes the attitudes and behaviour of the
Canadian forces
(CF),
and even fewer have considered the possibility that the
military's own culture might have a reciprocal influence on Canadian
civil
culture. As the author notes, "the very existence of armed forces within a
society
alters the perceptions of the members of that society" (49). Herein
lies
the true value of this slim, but long overdue, study by Allan English; he
takes us on an exploration of a phenomenon that lies at the very heart
of
the
Canadian military establishment and its often mysterious inner workings.
But
even for the few, dedicated scholars who study it, "military cul-
ture" is a slippery, amorphous concept not given to easy definition, let
I International
Journal
|
Spring
2005
| 601 |
To continue reading
Request your trial