Infantry Company As A Society

[baboon6]

http://www.mpkk.fi/attachment/ad9d29...ping_kevyt.pdf

From the introduction to this thesis:

During the Second World War Knut Pipping, a young Finnish sociologist, served as a NCO in a Finnish machine gun company. In 1942, during the war, he began an extensive sociological study of his own company. He gathered empirical material systematically during and after the war, and in 1947 his work was published as a doctoral dissertation at Åbo Academi. The dissertation was written in Swedish and had only a short English summary. In 2001 the Finnish Military Sociological Society started a project to translate Knut Pipping’s study into English.


There are very few scientific military sociological or military psychological studies that deal with small, integrated World War II military units, like platoons, companies or batteries. “The American Soldier”, a classical WW II study, was based on large-scale surveys and did not focus on small platoon or company-sized units. There are also a great number of very good military historical books and articles that deal with platoon or company-sized units in the Second World War, for instance “Band of Brothers” (Ambrose 2002, also a TV series), which tells the story of one infantry company. Although books like “Band of Brothers” provide fascinating reading and extremely interesting data for researchers, they are not scientific studies, like Pipping’s. Since Pipping’s work is relatively unknown to the English-speaking readership, and since there are very few similar small unit WW II studies, the Finnish Military Sociological Society wanted to have it translated into English.

[Ken White]

Baboon6 -- thanks for posting it.

Now to wade through it...

[MikeF]

Thanks for posting Baboon6. It's good to get the psychological and sociology lens to examine us. Now, to appease MarcT and Selil, we have to add the anthropologist.

Here's one effort. Anna Simons' The Company They Keep : Life Inside the U.S. Army Special Forces.

[jmm99]

Thanks (kiitos) for the catch.

The Finns have a fine fictional literature for the Winter War and Continuation War. Much of it was written by vets from those wars; and so, it has at least a docudrama quality. Some of it I have read and enjoyed. The over 200 page monograph you linked will, I am sure, be of interest to me (mother was of Finnish ancestry).

Regards

Mike

[William F. Owen]

Baboon6 -- thanks for posting it.

Now to wade through it...

Same. Gold dust.... possibly....probably.

[marct]

Great catch, Baboon! Definitely one to add to the library. MikeF, I've read some of Anna Simons' work and it is really very good.

Cheers,

Marc

[Schmedlap]

MarcT,

This is not a criticism of the article (I haven't read it) but just a question about methodology in general.

Is it discouraged for someone to do such a study on a group that they are a part of? I mean, if I were an anthropologist or sociologist, would it be advisable for me to do a study about my family or my workplace? Doesn't my attachment to the group introduce too many biases for me to be able to make dispassionate observations?

It seems that one's attachment to the group would cause one to overlook or rationalize some things and focus too heavily on others.

[marct]

Hi Schmedlap,

Is it discouraged for someone to do such a study on a group that they are a part of? I mean, if I were an anthropologist or sociologist, would it be advisable for me to do a study about my family or my workplace? Doesn't my attachment to the group introduce too many biases for me to be able to make dispassionate observations?

It can be tricky, but it's one of those "weigh the pros and cons" situations. As an insider, you generally know the "native taxonomy" much better than any outsider, so your questions tend to be more comprehensible, i.e. they actually make sense to the people in the group.

I wouldn't advise doing a study of your own family; that's too close to home as it were. Studying your workplace or group, OTOH, can be quite interesting.

On the issue of biases, yeah, some are introduced and you can't avoid that. On the flip side, you are going to have biases about any group you study, so it is probably a moot point as long as you are aware of them.

It seems that one's attachment to the group would cause one to overlook or rationalize some things and focus too heavily on others.

That does happen, and it may be a problem. Then again, is it more of a problem that appearing to be an idiot? That, BTW, isn't being facetious; I've seen interview schedules for groups that just made no sense whatsoever given the group's worldview. Let me give you an example....

You know that I did my MA on modern witchcraft, right? Well, I did a LOT of fieldwork in Ottawa, Toronto, Halifax, New York, etc., etc. By the time I had finished it, I knew a lot about the various Craft communities and the different worldviews. Partly as a result of that, I was asked to vet an interview schedule when I was doing my PhD which started with the question "When did you start worshiping the Devil?" Now, that interview schedule had been designed by someone who already had a PhD, but had never looked at modern witchcraft. The question itself is, in terms of Craft Cosmology, totally meaningless and, when I told them that, they got totally PO'd with me. BTW, that question is about the same as asking someone who has been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan how they felt when they killed their first baby....

Those are the types of things I mean by "stupid questions".....

Of course, on the flip side, there is usually a strong bias against noticing anything that makes the group appear to be in a bad light.

Cheers,

Marc