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Co-ordinator: Gielt Algra MA, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

About

The working group ”Veterans and Society” promotes all the veterans related research. With the position of veterans within society as well as their interaction with society and the armed forces, veterans are in a key position, as soon as the topic of armed forces and society is raised.  The working group on “Veterans and Society” is a relatively ‘young’ working group, since it was officially established during the ERGOMAS 2013 conference in Madrid. Two years before, during the ERGOMAS 2011  conference in Amsterdam, a first attempt was made to organize a panel with “Veterans and Society” as a topic. The number of participants who gave presentations during the sessions at the conferences steadily increased from 3 in Amsterdam, to 5 in Madrid, to 8 in Ra’anana ( Israel). The idea is to steadily increase the number of participants in future conferences, beginning with the planned conference in 2017 in Greece. Therefore, the working group is open for all interested researchers conducting studies in the field of “Veterans  and Society”.  The working group offers a unique opportunity to discuss the often presented national case studies and other insights with an international audience. The developing international cooperation and exchange of ideas within the working group should lead to an international comparative analysis on “Veterans and Society”.

 

News and activities

Introduction

Besides the call for papers for the working group on veterans and society within ERGOMAS for the Conference in Greece, Athens 26th-30th of June, the WG on Veterans and Society has formulated a special call for papers and presentations on ongoing research, in order to create a solid base for a joint publication of the WG. During the WG meeting in Doorn in December 2016 an abstract was formulated which describes the content of this research. ( see below). Other papers on the topic of Veterans and Society, not necessarily fitting within the content of this abstract, are of course still welcome. The WG is trying to organise this ‘special panel’ in addition to the ‘usual’ ones on Veterans and Society.
 

Beyond the uniform(ity)

Social construction of images of veterans in the post truth world

There seems to be no neutral images of veterans and there appears to be no ‘one truth’ about what a veteran is. This panel explores how images of veterans are constructed in different national and temporal contexts. This construction process matters because it impacts a complex web of social, political, economic and cultural relationships.

In this panel we would like to consider themes such as, but not limited to:

-       Official definitions vs cultural perceptions

-       Image construction with regards to the distribution and use of resources( political, economic, cultural)

-       Voices and narratives of veterans in their everyday life

-       Various images of veterans of different missions and wars

-       The negotiation of shifting cultural images, from hero to perpetrator to victim – and back again

-       Processes of destabilisation and how disruptive agents contest and challenge dominant understandings

In exploring these various dynamics we pay particular attention to what is at stake for the various actors involved. We invite scholars to contribute to this panel by presenting their papers on the topic of the ‘social construction of images of veterans in the post truth world’. It is the purpose of the organisers of the panel to take presentations in the panel as a start of a process that will lead to a published book on this subject. 

 

Paper room

The Netherlands Amsterdam, 13 – 17 June 2011

1.     Olga Nowaczyk ( Institute of Sociology, University of Wroclaw, Poland) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Veterans of the twenty – first century military operations, the case of Poland. The problems of the social construction of a new social group.

2.     Rene Moelker (Netherlands Defence Academy, Breda) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Genesis of Veteran culture. Motorcycling veterans pioneering in new cultural arrangements.

3.     Joyce Motshagen & Martin Elands ( Veterans Institute, Doorn, the Netherlands) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Voices of veterans. Perceptions on Societal Recognition and Veterans Policy

 

Spain, Madrid, 4-7 June 2013

1.     Paulo Granjo ( Lisbon University, Institute of Social Sciences and New University of Lisbon, Portugal) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Integrating Mozambican civil – war veterans through ritual cleansing

2.     Elin Gustavsen ( Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, Oslo, Norway) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Reintegration among two groups of Norwegian Afghanistan veterans: A comparative study of veterans who remained in service and who left the armed forces.

3.     Olga Nowaczyk (Institute of Sociology, University of Wroclaw) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Hate speech in the Polish public and political discourse about the military veterans who participated in missions abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan

4.     Esmeralda Kleinreesink, Neil Jenkings and Rachel Woodward, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
How (not) to sell a military memoir in Britain.

5.     Gielt Algra Martin Elands ( Veterans Institute, Doorn, The Netherlands) Rodney de Vries ( MOD, The Netherlands) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Dutch veterans and the Labour Market

 

Ra’anana, Israel 8 -12 June 2015

1.     Jacco Duel ( Veterans Institute, Doorn,  The Netherlands) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The long term consequences of military deployments for veterans: The correlates of impaired subjective wellbeing due to military deployments

2.     E.Koren, R . Dekel & M. Sher-Dotan ( M.Bar-LLan University, Israel) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Female veterans have disabillities too!

3.      Tiia-Trin Truusan ( Center of Exellence for StrategicSustainability, Estonia) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Supporting the troops: The effects of Estonia’s veterans policy

4.     Marcin Sincuch & Katarzyna gronek ( Military Center for Civic Education, Ministry of National Defence, Poland) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Soldiers as veterans – social support for the former participants of missions abroad

5.     Angela Campos, ( Centre for Life history and Life Writing research, School of Media, Film and Music, University of Sussex, United Kingdom) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
We were thrown into the rubbish bin of history: a dialogue with veterans of the Portuguese colonial war ( 1961 – 1974)

6.     Elin Gustavsen (Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, Oslo Norway) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The veteran experience from a spousal perspective

7.     Yvon de Reuver ( Veterans Institute, Doorn, The Netherlands) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
How bonding among veterans influences the experience of social recognition

8.     Jacco Duel ( Veterans Institute, doorn, The Netherlands) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Looking back on the mission: What makes veterans long for their past mission (s) ?

 

Abstracts

Madrid 2013

Paulo Granjo; Integrating Mozambican civil-war veterans through ritual cleansing

Unlike in most wars involving “western “countries, the first  people’s concern when the veterans from the Mozambican civil war started to return home was to make them overpass their traumatic experiences and guilt. In the southern part of the country, this was done through innovative cleansing rituals which are rooted on the local exegesis about misfortune and allow simultaneously, to confine war actions into an exceptional past situation, to expurgate the veteran from some danger he might represent and to publically proclaim him a new man, entitled to a fresh start inside the community. Besides their importance to the individual reintegration of the veterans , the generalized performance of such rituals also played an important role in the acceptance of previous enemies as “people like the others” and through this, in the normalization of the new framework of political competition – peaceful elections.  In the central-north of the country, meanwhile, the absence of complex cleansing rituals, that might fulfil all the above- mentioned tasks  seems to be connected to the persistence of mental health disorders, locally ascribed to the possession by dead soldiers.

 

Elin Gustavsen: Reintegration of two groups of Norwegian Afghanistan veterans: a comparative study of veterans who remained in service and left the armed forces

This paper examines how a sample of Norwegian Afghanistan veterans experience the transition back to Norwegian society. The research builds on interview data with veterans who still work in the armed forces and veterans who have left the organization. The paper investigates how participants in the two groups experience their general situation and everyday life and what difference it makes to remain in a military environment or to have left the armed forces and thereby, not have the same routine contact with people who share your experience. In particular this paper examines if this affects how the participants relate to their veteran identity, as well as how they look at veterans status in Norwegian society.

Olga Nowaczyk: Hate speech in the Polish public and political discourse about the military veterans who participated in missions abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan

The presentation focuses on a peculiar behavioural manifestation of political and public hatred. Hate speech which has appeared on the internet forums and are analysed in order to probe the dynamics involved in the communication of political and public hatred. The act of writing and mailing hostile internet comments, especially when a soldier is killed, is characterized as a particular form of political and public participation and interpreted as part of the social struggle over the boundaries and definition of the collective. The internet  comments of the letters is examined to uncover the main themes and mechanisms that are involved in the expression of political and public hatred to Polish

Esmeralda Kleinreesink  a.o., : In How (not to sell military memoir in Britain)

In this study we look at all ( n=15) military memoirs published between 2001 and 2010 in Britain about military participation in the Afghanistan conflict, to establish the factors which determine whether a military memoir becomes a best seller ( sales> 10.000copies) or not.  We look at the aspects of the book; content ( i.e. type of plot) cover ( e.g. whether rank or the award of medals is mentioned0 and author features ( e.g. seniority, sex, co-authorship by another established writer, preface by well known-person) and analysed data on these aspects and on sales figures using SPSS. The results are interesting for the insight they give into factors influencing sales. The use of a well-known preface writer or an established author  as a co-author does not help with sales of a memoir, and nor does the type of plot (using Friedman’s 1955 schema).  Neither does gender figure as a statistically significant factor. Based on the data available, two factors stand out in the creation of a best-selling military memoir for the British market. These are first the rank of the author; there is a correlation between seniority and sales , defined as senior NCO (OR-7 or above) for other Ranks and Major or equivalent and above for officers; and second , the award of a medal for actions during combat. Neither rank nor medal need to be shown on the cover. Explanations for this include the ‘platform ‘created by authors, and the nature of the existing market for military memoirs.

Martin Elands e.o. ,: Dutch Veterans and the Labour Market

In this paper the results will be discussed of different surveys among veterans on their experiences with finding and keeping jobs in civilian life. The appreciation of the veteran of his new working environment and it’s  consequences will be a central theme in this. The results of questionnaires among veterans who have recently left the armed forces and the results of in debt interviews with several of these veterans will be included in this paper. The focus  will be mainly on the question whether veterans are better employees or not. Are the experiences of veterans , in their own perspective, in case of job seeking, supportive or obstructive?

Ra’anana ( Israel) 2015

Jacco Duel: The long term consequences of military deployments for veterans: The correlates of impaired subjective well-being due to military deployment

It is well known that military deployments may have long-term negative health effects for military personnel that participated in those deployments. For example a study among U.S Gulf War veterans found that mental disorders following military service were more prevalent in deployed veterans compared with non-deployed veterans. Ten years later, the prevalence of depression and anxiety had declined in both groups, but remained higher in the deployed group, who also reported more symptoms and a lower quality of life than the non-deployed group. On  the other hand , a study among Dutch peacekeeping soldiers concluded that Dutch Peace keeping veterans showed no more psychological distress 10-25 years after deployment than a norm group. The purpose of our study was to determine whether Dutch veterans experience long-term consequences of military deployments and in how far eventual long- term consequences of military deployments affect their subjective well-being. We sent a questionnaire to 6000 Dutch veterans  who left the military service. The sample was a stratified sample of six  cohorts of 1000 veterans each. The six cohorts were created based on a specific time period. Each time period could be characterized with it’s prevailing personnel and health policies and the type of military operations ( e.g. peacekeeping/policing or peace enforcing/combat) that were executed. Besides several demographic aspects ( e.g. age , rank when being deployed, mission(s), marital status) and characteristics of the mission, we asked the respondents about their subjective well-being on nine life domains (e.g.  social functioning, psychological functioning, physical functioning). Moreover, we asked whether respondents had  health related problems due to their deployment(s) for which they needed professional help during the last three months.  We conducted several analyses ( e.g.  exploratory factor analyses, multiple linear regression analyses) to determine the relation between several demographical and mission related characteristics and subjective well-being and between those characteristics and the need for professional help due to deployment-related health problems. In total, 2814 veterans filled out the questionnaire. About 10% of the respondents needed professional help due to deployment related health problems.

E.Korel a.o., : Female veterans have disabilities too!

Israeli women have always had a well-defined and active role in the Israeli military. Consequently, women are subjected to injuries and wounds which are similar to those among men . Approximately 6% of veterans disabled during military service are female. However research and knowledge regarding Israeli women who have sustained injuries during their military service is glaring absent. Objective: The current presentation reviews data on Israel Defence forces (IDF) female veterans with disabilities in three main areas; demographic characteristics, social factors and psychological variables. Method; based on three studies, we will present information pertaining to; the socio-demographic characteristics of IDF-female veterans with disabilities and the factors that contribute tot heir adjustment in comparison with IDF-male veterans with disabilities; their psychological adjustment in comparison with matched female without disabilities and finally their experiences with formal rehabilitation institutes.

Results and Conclusion:  In comparison with IDF males with disabilities, IDF females with disabilities received less formal social support, felt more stigmatized and discriminated against, had a lower self-esteem and suffered from increased emotional problems. In addition, females  with disabilities reported significantly lower levels of mental health, purpose in life and a lower sense of self- mastery than females without disabilities. The women with disabilities also described difficulties encountered with the formal institutions that are meant to help them, as well as with society in general.  In conclusion we have found that this population is not receiving the kind of care or attention being received by their male counterparts, nor are their specific needs being adequately addressed.

Tiia-Triin Truusa: Supporting the troops: The effects of Estonia’s veterans policy.

After regaining independence in 1991, Estonia very soon became explicitly NATO-oriented in it’s  political and military development. Since 1995 Estonia has deployed soldiers under the UN mandate, and later under NATO, on various deployments starting with operations in Croatia and Lebanon. However the first veterans policy came into effect only in 2012. This paper looks at how the Estonian printed press portrays veterans before and after the implementation of the veterans policy. Articles from  the Index Scriptorium Estonia sub-database Estonian War Bibliography Database are analysed using qualitative content analyses. Articles span from 2007 – 2010 and 2012 – 2014. Analysis shows that content themes in the articles from the earlier period derived from the negative aspects of deployments, shortcomings of the social guarantee system and personal hardship stories of returning soldiers. The latter period articles shift towards affirming the support of veterans and personal success stories.  This may at least in part be attributed to the “recognition of veterans” measure, brought into life in the veterans policy, though the easing of the deployment burden and lack of casualties in the latter period are also significant.  This shift from the negative tot he positive representations has allowed for greater public acceptance and to some extent, the normalization of veterans’ status.

 

Marcin Sinzuch a.o., ; Soldiers as veterans- social support fort he former participants of missions abroad

Several research projects show that participating in MOOTW and different kinds of military deployment abroad is never neutral and brings to it’s participants a wide range of stressful experiences. Some of them are medically or psychologically diagnosed and- with some limitations – possible to receive successful treatment. Other symptoms might be included into a wide category of maladjustment deriving from basic diversities and contradictions between social order and environment present in the area of deployment and those in home country. The aim of the proposed paper is to present some social aspects of the process of returning Polish soldiers – former participants of missions abroad covering the issues of their experiences after return from the mission. The focus is made on the different kinds and sources of help and support that could be provided by the different social actors and institutions, like family members, colleagues, neighbours, physicians, psychologists, priests etc.  The result let us reconstruct the model of interactions and support received by soldiers in their every day  environment – as well as their social reception due to their veterans’ status.

Angela Campos: We were thrown into the rubbish bin of history: A dialogue with veterans of the Portuguese colonial war (1961 – 1974)

Between 1961 and 1974, Portugal sent around one million conscripts to Angola, Mozambique and Guinea, then Portuguese ‘overseas provinces’ in Africa, in order to maintain sovereignty over those territories.  This process, , commonly known as ‘the Portuguese colonial war’, ended in April 1974 with the democratic revolution initiated by the Portuguese Armed Forces in Portugal. Ever since , veterans of this war have  been visibly enveloped in shame and neglect, often feeling historically dismissed and socially excluded. Portugal’s uneasy relationship with its colonial past critically invites the oral historian to acknowledge and understand these ex-combatants’ war experience and its aftermath. Drawing upon extensive oral history interviews with Portuguese ex-combatants, this paper will argue for the significance of employing oral history – and further life history approaches – towards a wider reflection on the Portuguese colonial war informed by the narratives of its veterans.

Elin Gustavsen:  The veteran experience from a spousal perspective.

The paper examines how spouses of Norwegian Afghanistan veterans experience their situation. The research builds on interview data with partners of veterans who have been deployed and investigates how they experience the separation  and what meaning they assign tot he veteran experience from a spousal perspective. The study focuses in particular on how Norwegian  society facilitates their meaning construction and how the social context influences  how they frame this experience and how they interpret their role as a veteran partner.

 

Yvon de Reuver: How bonding among veterans influences the experience of social recognition

Some veterans identify very strongly with the idea of “being a veteran”.  These veterans appreciate other persons because they are veterans too, but they can also dismiss others because they aren’t veterans . Veterans often state that only other veterans can truly understand them. Sometimes  that’s  why they choose not to share any of their experiences with non-veterans, since those people will not get it anyway.  At the same time, these veterans  seem to expect acknowledgement and appreciation from non-veterans in society. The question is however, how a veteran can expect non-veterans to acknowledge and appreciate his or hers contribution to society, if the veteran is also under the impression that non-veterans won’t understand it anyway and therefore does not share his or her experiences.  When people do not know what exactly to appreciate , why would they show appreciation, and if they do so, what is it worth? Therefore in my PhD research, I want to study how the collective identity of veterans interacts with the sense of social recognition they experience or expect from non-veterans in society.  Important questions are how veterans construct their collective identity, how veterans view society, how they express their veterans ‘identity and how their collective identity influences the way they interact with society. In this paper I will present the theoretical framework form y PhD research. Important concepts will be collective identity, cultural communication, presentation of self and organizing practices.

 

Jacco Duel: Looking back on the mission:  what makes veterans longing for their past mission(s)?

Camaraderie, cohesion and the’ band of brothers’ are well known aspects of military life for soldiers and veterans. In our study, we investigated whether these social aspects of military life during deployment are paramount among the reasons for veterans ‘ longing fort heir past mission(s).  We sent a questionnaire to 6000 Dutch veterans who left the military service. Besides several demographic aspects (e .g. age, rank when being deployed, mission(s), marital  status), we asked the respondents whether they longed fort heir past mission(s) once in a while.  In addition, we asked the veterans   in how far 24 characteristics applied tot heir mission(s) .Half of these characteristics were negative e experiences  (e.g., frustration, anger, guilt, powerlessness) and half of them were positive experiences ( e.g., recognition, pride, comradeship, gaining life experience). We conducted several analyses  (exploratory factor analyses, discriminant analysis and logistic regression analyses) to determine the relation between longing fort he mission and mission characteristics. In total 2814 veterans filled out the questionnaire. Almost two-thirds of them ( 61%) longed for their past missions(s) once in a while. Contrary to what was expected, the social aspects of military life were important, but not the most determing factors for veterans longing for their mission(s). Aspects of pride , gaining life experience and broadening one’s  horizon appeared more important. Apparently, the way of living, the circumstances under which one was deployed and one’s achievements were unique and appeal veterans even decades after deployment. The paper discusses the implications of our findings.