Following the publication of Anthony King's 2006 article in Armed Forces & Society (The Word of Command: Communication and Cohesion in the Military), Guy Siebold and Anthony King debated the issue of cohesion, in our Disputatio Sine Fine section. King's new book The Combat Soldier grew out of that exchange.The following essay continues the debate by reviewing King's book. The pieces gathered in in this Disputatio are intended as a-temporary-conclusion to these discussions.One tradition in the social sciences is to debunk something and then let that lead to a new grander vision for society. In his treatise, Anthony King tends to follow that tradition. He starts out by debunking the myth of the effectiveness of the citizen soldier and ends with implicit support for the professionalization of everything as a means to greater solidarity in the postmodern world. Both the debunking and support for professionalization seem overdone.Nevertheless, in between his debunking and grander vision, Professor King provides a well-written (perhaps too lengthy, sometimes rambling) and well-documented work of immense value, describing infantry tactics from World War I up to the present time, with a clear depiction of the brutality of industrial age and urban warfare. Particularly, useful is his style of presenting a tactical problem and indicating what was done to address the problem. For example, King describes the problem with inertia and passivity by the undertrained citizen soldier, which he labels the (S. L. A.) Marshall Effect, and how the military tried to overcome the effect by using mass, appeals to masculinity, and support for heroic individual effort. King also effectively presents what appear to be counterexamples to his assertions but which he shows are not.The book is organized logically. Early chapters depict the horrors of combat in the industrial age, the Marshall Effect problem, and King's theoretical framework. For the latter, he notes that the battlefield is an arena in which the problems of social order and collective action are particularly highlighted and the social processes of group formation, maintenance, and disintegration are on vivid display. Paralleling Emile Durkheim's seminal text on the religious life, 1 King states (p. 16) that he wants to imitate Durkheim's method by examining the most elementary military forms (the platoon, squad, and fire team) to explore group formation and maintenance in combat and general theoretical concerns about social solidarity. In the middle of his book, King details combat motivation, the older mass infantry tactics, modern infantry tactics, and the persistence of difficulties lingering from the older tactics. The solution to the problems occurring with the older tactics is presented in the chapters on battle drills, training, and professionalism. Finally, King adds on chapters describing the nominal success of the female soldier and professionalism as a societal trend. He typically provides a useful summary at the end of each chapter.The Combat Soldier's intended audie...

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This study examines how collective identity based around military school ties influences an individual officer’s achievement in the military. The central premise of this study is that if collective identity can form the basis for fragmented social networks in the South Korean officer corps, it can result in different opportunities for members within different networks. The results presented here demonstrate that collective identities are important explanatory factors to account for this exchange of social resources. All else being equal, the exchange of instrumental and material resources is more likely between military officers who graduated from the same civilian or military school.