“Military Families” – Critical Perspectives on a Research Field

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Danish soldiers and their families going through military deployment between 2015 and 2016, this article investigates the term “military families” from a critical anthropological perspective. It starts by outlining how the military family, as a discrete category, emerged as a research field in the United States between the 1960s and 1980s. The article argues that the specific geographical context in which the study of military families developed has had significant impact both on the academic knowledge produced about these families and what has come to be understood as a “military family.” The article proceeds to identify dominant research themes within three academic disciplines which, it is argued, have each shaped the study of military families: psychology, sociology and feminist studies. In the second part of the article, anthropological perspectives on military family life are introduced as examples illustrating the ways in which the cultural and social context become relevant when investigating how military deployment and the military institution affect both service members and their families. The paper argues that an exploration of “things military” (Lutz, 2002) must relate to and take into consideration the societal and cultural norms shaping the experience of any military.