This book focuses on the key issues that affect military families when soldiers are deployed overseas, focusing on the support given to military personnel and families before, during and after missions.

Compared with the Cold War period, and to a lesser extent the era of mass armed forces, there is a greater need for today s postmodern armies to provide social-psychological support both to their personnel in military operations abroad and to their families at home. Since the end of the Cold War and even more so after 9/11, there has been a multitude of missions carried out by multinational task forces all over the world for more or less extended periods. This implies more frequent separations between military personnel and their families.

The book focuses on three central questions affecting military families.First, how do changing missions and tasks of the military affect soldiers and families? This question relates to the way the armed forces seek to adapt their structure to the new missions and how military families cope with competing demands from military and private life. Second, what is the effect of deployments on the ones left behind? Psychologically, a deployment weighs heavily on families and deployed soldiers, who face separation, and therefore the stresses on the soldier and the military family are significant. Third, what is the national structure of family support systems and its evolution?

The book employs a multidisciplinary approach, with contributions from psychology, sociology, history, anthropology and others. At the same time it takes a multitude of perspectives such as the theoretical, empirical, reflective, life events (narrative) approach, national and the global, and uses approaches from different disciplines and perspectives, combining them to produce a volume that enhances our knowledge and understanding of military families. The volume covers all the services, Army, Navy/Marines, Air Force, and covers a wide range of different countries.

This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, sociology, war and conflict studies, and IR in general.

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This book focuses on the key issues that affect military families when soldiers are deployed overseas, focusing on the support given to military personnel and families before, during and after missions. Today's postmodern armies are expected to provide social-psychological support both to their personnel in military operations abroad and to their families at home. Since the end of the Cold War and even more so after 9/11, separations between military personnel and their families have become more frequent as there has been a multitude of missions carried out by multinational task forces all over the world. The book focuses on three central questions affecting military families. First, how do changing missions and tasks of the military affect soldiers and families? Second, what is the effect of deployments on the ones left behind? Third, what is the national structure of family support systems and its evolution? The book employs a multidisciplinary approach, with contributions from psychology, sociology, history, anthropology and others. In addition, it covers all the services, Army, Navy/Marines, Air Force, spanning a wide range of countries, including UK, USA, Belgium, Turkey, Australia and Japan. At the same time it takes a multitude of perspectives such as the theoretical, empirical, reflective, life events (narrative) approach, national and the global, and uses approaches from different disciplines and perspectives, combining them to produce a volume that enhances our knowledge and understanding of military families. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, sociology, war and conflict studies and IR/political science in general.

This book explores, on the basis of theoretical overviews and empirical case studies, how soldiers cope with the new forms of cultural diversity occurring within various multinational military operations and how their organizations manage them.

In the postmodern global world, military organizations, like other complex organizations, are now operating in an ever more diverse environment, and their missions are themselves also very diverse (war fighting, counter-terrorism, peace-enforcing, peacekeeping, humanitarian) and take place all over the world, in culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse regions, and mostly conducted in a multinational framework. It is crucial for military organizations to understand how military personnel manage the cultural diversity caused by the necessity of international cooperation between the various national contingents and by the relations with the other actors in the theatre of operations.

Military Cooperation in Multinational Peace Operations will be of much interest to students of peace operations, military studies, international security as well as sociology and business studies.

This edited volume uses theoretical overviews and empirical case studies to explore both how soldiers cope with the new forms of cultural diversity occurring within various multinational military operations, and how their organizations manage them. Military organizations, like other complex organizations, are now operating in an ever more diverse environment, with the missions themselves being ever more varied, and mostly conducted in a multinational framework. Members of the military have to deal with a host of international actors in the theatre of operations, and do so in a foreign cultural environment, often in countries devastated by war. Such conditions demand a high level of intercultural competence. It is therefore crucial for military organizations to understand how military personnel manage this cultural diversity. This book will be of much interest to students of peace operations, military studies, international security, as well as sociology and business studies.

This book aims at assessing how the changing geopolitical environment has affected the public perception of the roles, missions and structures of modern military organisations.