Introduction: Rethinking the Former Combatants’ Return to Civilian Life

Abstract

The introduction examines research in the fields of history, political science, sociology, and anthropology concerning combat veterans of various armed conflicts, within and between states. Two research methodologies emerge which, though developed independently of each other, reflect a preoccupation with similar questions. The author proposes a third methodology, reformulating these questions in the aim of laying the groundwork for a political sociology of the ex-combatant's return to civilian life and their postwar trajectories. Critical of the view that the end of a war opens up a radically new era, the author suggests taking a closer look at the legacies of war, its postwar sociological and cognitive continuities and discontinuities, the possible difficulties involved in ex-combatants ridding themselves of a violent “mode,” the effects, from that point of view, of policies aimed at them, and the strategies of individual veterans facing the deep sociological and political transformations of the postwar period. The career concept proposed by Howard Becker certainly helps to better understand and deal with ex-combatants' postwar itineraries.