Pathways to Pacifism and Antiwar Activism Among U.S. Veterans: The Role of Moral Identity in Personal Transformation

ISBN-13: 9781498538633 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 216 str.

Julie Putnam Hart; Anjel N. Stough-Hunter

Opis

This book seeks to answer the question: how and why do some military personnel become anti-war activists? To explore this question we examine the stories of 114 veterans' pathways from a militaristic perspective to either a Just War or pacifist perspective. Identity Theory provides a lens for exploring this process. Identity Theory is rooted in sociology, specifically Structural Symbolic Interactionism that explains the formation of one's self via a continuous self-regulating cycle of identity verification. The vast majority of these veterans did not merely change their attitudes about war but they transformed their entire identities (religious, political, social, and career). We argue that this post-service process of identity transformation was not pathological but healthy as it offered healing and verification of multiple roles and social aspects of the veterans' lives. Following the difficult disruption of their pro-war moral identity, these veterans' in-depth interviews reveal they are feeling authentic and whole once again in their anti-war activism.