A01=John P. Hawkins
Author_John P. Hawkins
Category=JM
Category=JWCD
Category=JWT
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eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Military History
Product details
- ISBN 9780275967383
- Weight: 652g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 30 May 2001
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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This ethnography describes the intense contradictions that exist between the cultural values of American life and the cultural values needed to survive in combat, as represented through the experiences of forward-deployed U.S. Army units in Germany during the height of the Cold War. Living in constant military readiness, yet participating in peacetime community and family processes, Army personnel had to tolerate the contradictions and live by both sets of principles. In soldier perception, family life and community activities ought to have been guided by American rather than military values. Yet the military ran the community, and military activities penetrated and disrupted family life.
In Germany the penetration and disruption was much exacerbated by isolation, for these Americans did not generally have the language or cultural skills to escape from the military community. Rather, they were marooned in an intensely judgmental fish bowl community where there was no private life. The resulting scrutiny and the measures people took to avoid it and sustain autonomy corrupted the community, its families, and the units themselves. The scrutiny, with its attendant risks, and the intense contradiction in values led to feelings of profound alienation.
John P. Hawkins is Professor of Anthropology at Brigham Young University. He is also a lieutenant colonel in the Medical Service Corps of the United States Army Reserve (retired as of August 2000) and has been a research associate of the Department of Military Psychiatry (now called Soldier and Family Studies), Division of Neuropsychiatry, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, since 1981. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1978 after completing field work on family, culture, and ethnic relations in western highland Guatemala.
