Hi 120mm,
Good overview texts? That's tricky. Probably the best one is by Claude Levi-Strauss, Totemism (I have the translation by Rodney Needham, 1963 Beacon Press). I think you could get some traction on it by making a somewhat broader argument along the following lines:
- military organizations are collections of "lineages" (para kinship networks)
- lineages draw their validity from "eponymous ancestors"; this includes foundation myths, tribal "gnosis" (i.e. tribe specific knowledge), and culural patternings for using technology.
- lineages have mythic "arrangements" with their founders, stories and, also, have sterotype myths of "proper conduct", both fictive and real (i.e. the "should" and the "would").
- in order to sell to a lineage, a product or story must fit that lineages myths, including all of its patternings.
There's probably a couple of lines of logic I've left out, but I think that would ground your argument, especially since military organizations tend to be fairly "conservative".
The best person I could recommend is a friend of mine, Philip Thurtle, at the University of Washington (http://faculty.washington.edu/thurtle/). Phil taught at Carleton for a couple of years and is both brilliant and, at the same time, a really nice guy open to new ideas. He teaches in the Comparative History of Ideas program (http://depts.washington.edu/chid/).
He would certainly be a good person to contact for information on a Ph.D. program (tell him I sent you ).
Marc
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