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The armed forces and the societies they come from, and/or work in are related to one another in a multitude of ways (for the following see Kümmel, 2002). An adequate theoretical framework to capture the relationship between what may be termed the military world and what may be termed the world out there is offered by the systems theory as, for example, put forward in Martin Edmonds’ Armed Services and Society (Edmonds, 1990: especially 113f.). In this vein, the armed services can be conceived as a system that is distinct from its environment and is in its interacting and interdependent component parts operating on specific systems logic. Thus the system (or rather the sub-system) of the armed forces can be analyzed in terms of its relationship with its environment and with other (sub-)systems that are working and operating in this environment. One may distinguish six – to be sure: interdependent and interpenetrated – dimensions to cover the richness of civil–military relations.¹ These are: economy, finances, technology, culture, society, and politics. But the complexity of the theoretical framework has to be advanced even further. Two additional points have to be dealt with. One is that the environment of the military the world out there falls into two different spheres; a national and an international one implying that these very six dimensions have to be seen in a national/domestic as well as in an international context. The second and last point is that these various dimensions of relations between the military and society look quite different depending on the point in time they are looked upon. In other words, the time factor has to be included into the analysis. According to the scheme resulting from this tableau, research issues can be grouped. The following table gives some examples for research topics that fall into the various categories and illustrate that the study of relations between the military and the society is an interdisciplinary undertaking (Table 1).

According to Kümmel, the military is a highly complex social phenomenon touching several different contexts and is thus subject to multiple processes of interpretation (Kümmel, 2003). For this reason, the military is studied from a trans- or interdisciplinary perspective. Historically, the military function could be synthesised in the protection of the entire nation from external invasion and the ruling regime from domestic unrest as well as the conduct of wars for foreign policy objectives. This function raises a basic peculiarity of the military that makes it a special institution: the legitimate management of violence. Such as every organisation, the military changed over time and the changes ask for a revision of the management modalities of many aspects of its operations. From here the idea of a research about the collective representation of military personnel in Italy started. This article is intended to present the planned research. The survey is divided into three parts. To begin, I will analyse some aspects of the military changes, in order to know the context in which the need for an empirical research about this matter is placed. Next, I will examine the structure of the Italian collective representation of the military, pointing out some of the problems of the actual system. To conclude, I will briefly present the research.

When the German armed forces came into being in the mid-1950s, as a result of the international tensions due to the Cold War, few considered female soldiers. It took another decade until this issue began to be discussed in society and in politics. This discussion of the 1960s was shaped by a wide-ranging democratisation and significant socio- and politico-cultural changes. Starting with the so-called student movement, various parts of German society became important social movements that called for political and societal participation. Among these were various women's movement groups that criticised the patriarchically structured German society and sought emancipation and gender equality as laid out in various UN documents. Of course, during this endeavour, some parts of them also demanded equal access and participation to professions that had hitherto been male-exclusive domains. Shortly thereafter, the male-dominated soldierly profession and the Bundeswehr viewed pressure from society, which soon translated into the political sphere and put the issue of women in the military on the agenda (Kraake, 1992; Albrecht-Heide & Bujewski-Crawford, 1991; Fischer, 1997).

Since the suicide terrorist attacks of September Eleven, security issues have become more prominent again. There is also an increased interest in the military since the military was and still is seen as a major instrument in the so-called ‘war on terror’. The current international situation has thus increased the importance, significance and urgency of a correct, broad-based research effort on the part of the social sciences to study the emergence and development of conflicts with an eye on the means of conflict resolution. In this context, it is also appropriate and necessary to analyse one, albeit ambivalent, instrument of conflict resolution, the armed forces. Today, the military is said to face new and broader tasks than in the past.

Times are a-changing, and the military are changing with them. In this collection of sociological studies on the armed forces and conflict resolution we have seen that the military face at least three types of developments.

The study of armed forces and conflict resolution has undergone important developments at the turn of the millennium and this has occurred not only due to the far-reaching work of scholars in the field, but, as often occurs in the social sciences, has been driven by events and new situations. It is well to recall in this regard that it was precisely the need for knowledge and intervention on the military institution that brought about the groundbreaking work done in the United States by Samuel Stouffer (see Stouffer et al., 1949) and his team after the country had entered into war, a work that gave rise to the contemporary history of sociology applied to armed forces.

In recent decades, the world has been changing quite substantially. Long gone are the times when the Cold War, the bipolar East–West conflict with the United States of America and the Soviet Union as the main antagonists, produced a somewhat shaky stability in international relations due to the widespread fear of a nuclear holocaust. Looking back on this period from the angle of the 21st century and bearing in mind all that happened since the early 1990s, the Cold War world resembles a comparatively very stable and peaceful era. The period since then, however, is marked by considerable conflict in the global arena, even violent ones, which have become more numerous. Mankind has always lived dangerously, according to Raymond Aron, and this bonmot very much applies to our present era.