About this Research Topic
Today’s global situation is a reminder that war appears to be an inescapable social fact across human history. War, in all its shapes and forms, has an existential impact on society as people’s individual and collective existence is at stake. The cost of survival can be extremely high and can have long-lasting effects, which speaks to the depth of potential wounds – from the individual to the societal levels.
War causes visible and invisible wounds which can impact health negatively and result in diagnosable as well as un-diagnosable illnesses and conditions. Such wounds are often approached and understood through medicine, although the wounds of combat may manifest in ways that medical methods miss.
By seeing health and illness as social and individual bodily processes, and conceptualizing medicine as a practice and profession that is entangled with governance and speculative capital, sociology offers critical insights to medicine’s curative and therapeutic benefits. The mismatch between the complexities and diversities of human experience, on the one hand, and the pursuit of precise scientific solutions, on the other, some of which are profitable, offers territory for an imaginative progressive sociology to explore. The challenge for sociology is to continue its critical approach to interrogating the social processes of health and illness, to contribute to more humane, equitable, and effective healing that integrates scientific evidence with people’s values and experience.
This Research Topic aims at bringing together researchers from sociological, psychological, and diverse medical fields to broaden our understanding of societal and individual wounds of war. Contributions that cover both military and deployed non-military personnel (e.g., deployed personnel from various agencies who carry out missions in conflict areas, volunteers in armed conflicts) contribute to the diversity of this topic. Both theoretical and empirical studies are welcome.
Topics that are of particular interest include, but are not limited to, the following areas:
• The history and emerging field of diagnosis (tailored to war and combat)
• Conflict- or warzone deployment
• Warrior or radicalized identity
• Transition from military to civilian life
• Reintegration into civilian life
• Societal and institutional views and approaches to warzone related illnesses
• Traditional, cultural, spiritual or animal approaches to mitigating or healing of warzone conditions, sufferings, and illnesses
• Effects on military-connected families (e.g., spouses, children).
War causes visible and invisible wounds which can impact health negatively and result in diagnosable as well as un-diagnosable illnesses and conditions. Such wounds are often approached and understood through medicine, although the wounds of combat may manifest in ways that medical methods miss.
By seeing health and illness as social and individual bodily processes, and conceptualizing medicine as a practice and profession that is entangled with governance and speculative capital, sociology offers critical insights to medicine’s curative and therapeutic benefits. The mismatch between the complexities and diversities of human experience, on the one hand, and the pursuit of precise scientific solutions, on the other, some of which are profitable, offers territory for an imaginative progressive sociology to explore. The challenge for sociology is to continue its critical approach to interrogating the social processes of health and illness, to contribute to more humane, equitable, and effective healing that integrates scientific evidence with people’s values and experience.
This Research Topic aims at bringing together researchers from sociological, psychological, and diverse medical fields to broaden our understanding of societal and individual wounds of war. Contributions that cover both military and deployed non-military personnel (e.g., deployed personnel from various agencies who carry out missions in conflict areas, volunteers in armed conflicts) contribute to the diversity of this topic. Both theoretical and empirical studies are welcome.
Topics that are of particular interest include, but are not limited to, the following areas:
• The history and emerging field of diagnosis (tailored to war and combat)
• Conflict- or warzone deployment
• Warrior or radicalized identity
• Transition from military to civilian life
• Reintegration into civilian life
• Societal and institutional views and approaches to warzone related illnesses
• Traditional, cultural, spiritual or animal approaches to mitigating or healing of warzone conditions, sufferings, and illnesses
• Effects on military-connected families (e.g., spouses, children).
Keywords: war, combat, conflict, wounds, health, illness, diagnosis, reintegration
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
