Combat, Cohesion and Gender

女性可以成为步兵吗？战斗是人类活动中最极端的形式之一，纵观整个人类历史，它几乎一直是一个男性领域。然而，随着武装部队的职业化和最近在阿富汗行动的压力，妇女参军和参加行动已越来越被接受，甚至正常化。加拿大和丹麦现在允许女性进入步兵，尽管英国和美国仍然禁止女性进入步兵，但英国和美国的女性士兵越来越多地在战斗情况下服务于前线。这项研究探讨了女性越来越积极地参与战争这一重要的、可能具有历史意义的问题。尽管身体上的差异并非无关紧要，但女性被排除在步兵之外通常是正当的，因为这可能会对男性士兵的凝聚力产生影响。女性威胁着男性军队的战斗表现。为了审查妇女是否可以成为步兵的成员，并确定可能促进或限制这种参与的文化和体制条件，本研究采用了历史和比较的观点。它调查了这样一个论点，即20世纪大规模应征入伍的士兵训练不足，在战斗中表现普遍很差。从第一次世界大战到越战，凝聚力主要是通过呼吁无关的社会价值观来鼓励的(而且往往不是很成功)；男子气概、种族或民族主义。应征入伍的士兵因为他们的社会相像而联系在一起，像同志一样；像战友一样。女性在这些群体中几乎没有空间。相比之下，具有讽刺意味的是，21世纪职业军队的凝聚力基础可能既更有效，也更客观。职业军队现在把训练放在首位。他们通过向士兵们灌输训练来产生凝聚力和高水平的集体表现，这些训练是为了让士兵们一起执行。凝聚力现在似乎主要基于实践能力，而不是社会标准；技能而不是社会同质性现在被视为最重要的。这似乎正在产生重要的社会学后果。至关重要的是，鉴于这种职业化，妇女在前线与步兵一起行动，在某些情况下，她们自己担任步兵，这一点正变得可以接受。战斗士兵在战斗中团结起来、发挥作用的方式发生了根本性的转变，让曾经被排除在一线之外的个人成为这些高度凝聚力群体的成员。通过对加拿大、丹麦、德国、法国、英国和美国军队的纪录片、田野调查和访谈研究，本研究试图探索女性参与步兵的可能性和局限性。通过这种方式，职业军队可能反映了更广泛的社会变化。虽然在20世纪，尤其是在上半叶，社会在种族和种族上是同质的，性别、种族和阶级等级都有明确的定义，但当今全球化社会的特点是，随着传统界限的侵蚀，混合性越来越强。在民间社会，也有可能声称，新形式的团结正在出现，不是基于人们是什么--无论他们是男性、女性、黑人、白人、同性恋还是异性恋者--而是他们的所作所为；在职业、消费、休闲活动、生活方式和激进主义方面。在阿富汗南部作战的步兵的凝聚力可能是那种专业化、本地化和基于实践的团结的军事版本，这种团结正越来越多地定义当今人们的生活。通过对社会实践中一种小而戏剧性的形式--战斗的调查，本研究旨在探索这些社会存在的深刻变化。

Can women be infantry soldiers? Combat is one of the most extreme forms of human activities and throughout human history it has been almost exclusively a masculine domain. However, with the professionalization of the armed forces and the recent pressures of operations in Afghanistan, female participation in the army and on operations has been increasingly accepted and even normalised. Canada and Denmark now allow women in the infantry and, while the UK and US still maintain their bans on females in the infantry, female British and American soldiers have increasingly served on the front line in combat situations. This research addresses this important and potentially historic issue of the increasingly active participation of women in war.Although the physical differences are not irrelevant, women's exclusion from the infantry has typically been justified by reference to its presumed effects on cohesion among the male soldiers. Females threaten the combat performance of male troops. In order to examine whether women can be members of the infantry and to identify the cultural and institutional conditions which might facilitate or limit this participation, this research adopts a historic and comparative perspective. It investigates the thesis that soldiers in mass conscript armies of the twentieth century were poorly trained and generally performed badly in combat. From the First World War to Vietnam, cohesion was encouraged primarily (and often not very successfully) through appeals to extraneous social values; masculinity, ethnicity or nationalism. Conscript soldiers were bound together by their social likeness, as comrades; as brothers-in-arms. There was little room for women in these groups.By contrast, the basis of cohesion in the professional armies of the twenty-first century may ironically be both more effective and more impersonal. Professional armies now prioritise training. They engender cohesion and high levels of collective performance through the inculcation of drills which soldiers are trained to execute together. Cohesion seems now to be based primarily on practical competence not social criteria; skill not social homogeneity is now regarded as paramount. This seems to be having important sociological consequences. Crucially, in the light of this professionalization, it is becoming acceptable for women to operate with infantry soldiers on the front line and, in some cases, to perform as infantry soldiers themselves. There has been a fundamental shift in the way in how combat soldiers unite themselves and perform their roles in battle, allowing individuals who were once excluded from the front-line to become members of these highly cohesive groups. Through documentary, fieldwork and interview research with the armies of Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, the UK and the US, this research seeks to explore the possibilities and limits of women's participation in the infantry.In this way, the professional army perhaps reflects wider social changes. While societies in the twentieth century, especially in its first half, were ethnically and racially homogenous with clearly defined gender, ethnic and class hierarchies, globalised society today is characterised by increasing hybridity as tradionally boundaries erode. In civilian society, too, it might be possible to claim that new forms of solidarity are emerging based not on what people are - whether they are men, women, black, white, gay or straight - but on what they do; in terms of careers, consumption, leisure activity, lifestyle and activism. The cohesion of infantry soldier fighting in southern Afghanistan may be a military version of the kind of specialised, localised and practice-based solidarity which is increasingly defining the lives of people today. Through the investigation of one small but dramatic form of social practice, combat, this research aims to explore these profound changes in social existence.