Emotions on the Battlefield: Towards A Sociological Analysis
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Jan 1, 2025
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Abstract
The focal point of this article is the relationship between emotions and close-range fighting. Emotions play a central role in warfare. Nearly all soldiers who encounter combat zones experience intense emotional reactions. Some of these emotions are negative, such as fear, panic, anger, rage, or shame, while others are more positive, including pride, elation, joy, or exhilaration. Some scholars argue that there is inherent uniformity of emotional reactions on the battlefield. However, recent studies indicate that the emotional dynamics in the combat zone are more complex and flexible. Following this research, I argue in this article that there are pronounced historical and cultural differences in the emotional responses of fighters in combat zones. Facing the same realities of close-range fighting, soldiers tend to display different emotional reactions and these reactions are more variable as the cultural and historical contexts change.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.61439/UNYH4829
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
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Bourke, J. 2000. An Intimate History of Killing. London: Granta.
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Caputo, P. 1977. A Rumour of War. New York: Ballantine.
Collins, R. 2008. Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
De Man, H. 1920. The Remaking of a Mind. London: Allen & Unwin.
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Germani, I. 2016. Mediated Battlefields of the French Revolution and Emotives at Work. In: Kuijpers, E. and C. der Haven (eds) Battlefield Emotions 1500–1800: Practices, Experience, Imagination. London: Palgrave.
Goldstein, J.S. 2001. War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Marshall, S.L.A. 1947. Men against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command. New York: Morrow.
McManus, J. 2007. The Deadly Brotherhood: The American Combat Soldier in World War II. New York: Random House.
McNeill, W. 1997. Keeping together in time. Dance and Drill in the human history. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Moynihan, M. 1980. Greater Love. Letters Home 1914-1918. London: W.H. Allen.
Munson, C 2016. Battlefield Commission. Bloomington, IN: Author House.
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Pettegrew, J. 2015. Light It Up: The Marine Eye for Battle in the War for Iraq. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Plamper, J. 2009. Emotional Turn? Feelings in Russian History and Culture. Introduction. Slavic Review, 68(2), pp. 229-237.
Plamper, J. 2017. History of Emotions: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reddy, W. 2001. The Navigation of Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rosenwein, B. 2010. Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions Passion in Context. https://www.passionsincontext.de/uploads/media/01_Rosenwein.pdf
Scheer, M. 2012. Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and Is That What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuan Approach to Understanding Emotion. History and Theory 51(2):193-220.
Spiller, R. 1988. S. L. A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire. RUSI Journal, 133(4): 63–71.
Stouffer, SA et al 1949. The American Soldier. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
van der Haven, C. 2016. Drill and Allocution as Emotional Practices in Seventeenth-century Dutch Poetry, Plays and Military Treatises. In: Kuijpers, E. and C. der Haven (eds) Battlefield Emotions 1500–1800: Practices, Experience, Imagination. London: Palgrave.
von Schell, A. 2013. Battle Leadership. Brattleboro, VT: Echo Point Books.
Wikan, U. 1989. Managing the Heart to Brighten Face and Soul: Emotions in Balinese Morality and Health Care. American Ethnologist 16 (2): 294-312.
Wilcox, V. 2012. ‘Weeping tears of blood’: Exploring Italian soldiers’ emotions in the First World War. Modern Italy. 17(2): 171-184.
Barkawi, T. 2017. Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bausman, C. 2016. U.S. Military Methods for Fear Inoculation. https://mtntactical.com/research/u-s-military-methods-fear-inoculation/
Baker, M. 1982 Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There. New York: Morrow.
Beevor, A. 2009. D-Day: The Battle for Normandy. London: Penguin.
Berkovich, I. 2016. Fear, Honour and Emotional Control on the Eighteenth-Century Battlefield. In: Kuijpers, E. and C. der Haven (eds) Battlefield Emotions 1500–1800: Practices, Experience, Imagination. London: Palgrave.
Blake, J. (1970). The Organisation as Instrument of Violence: The Military Case. Sociological Quarterly 11: 331-350.
Bourke, J. 2000. An Intimate History of Killing. London: Granta.
Burleigh, M. 2011. Moral Combat: A History of World War II. New York: HarperCollins.
Caputo, P. 1977. A Rumour of War. New York: Ballantine.
Collins, R. 2008. Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
De Man, H. 1920. The Remaking of a Mind. London: Allen & Unwin.
Demiéville, P. (2010). 'Buddhism and War.' In: M. K. Jerryson and M. Juergensmeyer (eds.), Buddhist Warfare. Oxford: Oxford University
du Picq, A. (2006) [1903]. Battle Studies. New York: Bibliobazar.
Fajans, J. 1997. They Make Themselves: Work and Play among the Baining of Papua New Guinea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fussel, M. 2016. Emotions in the Making: The Transformation of Battlefield Experiences during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). In: Kuijpers, E. and C. der Haven (eds) Battlefield Emotions 1500–1800: Practices, Experience, Imagination. London: Palgrave.
Germani, I. 2016. Mediated Battlefields of the French Revolution and Emotives at Work. In: Kuijpers, E. and C. der Haven (eds) Battlefield Emotions 1500–1800: Practices, Experience, Imagination. London: Palgrave.
Goldstein, J.S. 2001. War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grossman D. 1996. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Boston: Little, Brown.
Hempel A.A., Levine R.D., Meloy J.D., Westermeyer J.D. 2000. Cross-cultural review of sudden mass assault by a single individual in the oriental and occidental cultures. Journal of Forensic Sciences. 45 (3): 582–588
Hochschild, A. 2012. To End all Wars - a story of loyalty and rebellion, 1914-1918. New York: Mariner Books.
Holmes, R. 1985. Acts of War. New York: Free Press.
Homer 2017. Iliad. London: Vintage Classics.
Houghton, F. 2019. The Veterans' Tale: British Military Memoirs of the Second World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
James, F. 2009. William Calley Makes First Public Apology for Vietnam War's My Lai Massacre. NPR Newsletter https://www.npr.org/
Junger, S. 2010. War. New York: Grand Central.
Jünger, E. 2016 [1920] Storm of Steel. London: Penguin.
Keegan, J. 1994. A History of Warfare. New York: Random House.
King, A. 2011. The Combat Soldier: Infantry Tactics and Cohesion in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Klein, C. 2016. Instinct Combat Shooting. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Klay, P. 2014. Redeployment. London: Penguin.
Krys, K at al. 2016. Be Careful Where You Smile: Culture Shapes Judgments of Intelligence and Honesty of Smiling Individuals. Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour. 40:101–116.
Kuijpers, E. and C. der Haven 2016. Battlefield Emotions 1500–1800: Practices, Experience, Imagination. In: Kuijpers, E. and C. der Haven (eds) Battlefield Emotions 1500–1800: Practices, Experience, Imagination. London: Palgrave.
Levi, P. 1995. If Not Now, When? London: Penguin.
Litz, B et al 2009. Moral Injury and Moral Repair in War Veterans: A Preliminary Model and Intervention Strategy. Clinical Psychology Review 29(8):695-706.
Lutz, C. 1988. Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Malešević, S. 2010. The Sociology of War and Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Malešević, S. 2017. The Rise of Organised Brutality: A Historical Sociology of Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Malešević, S. 2020. The Act of Killing: Understanding the Emotional Dynamics of Violence on the Battlefield. Critical Military Studies. 10.1080/23337486.2019.1673060
Mann, M. 2019. Fear, Loathing, and Moral Qualms on the Battlefield. Thesis Eleven, 154 (1): 11-27.
Marlantes, K. 2011. What it is Like to Go to War. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.
Marshall, S.L.A. 1947. Men against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command. New York: Morrow.
McManus, J. 2007. The Deadly Brotherhood: The American Combat Soldier in World War II. New York: Random House.
McNeill, W. 1997. Keeping together in time. Dance and Drill in the human history. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Moynihan, M. 1980. Greater Love. Letters Home 1914-1918. London: W.H. Allen.
Munson, C 2016. Battlefield Commission. Bloomington, IN: Author House.
Shey. J. 2014. Moral Injury. Psychoanalytic Psychology. 31 (2): 182–191.
Skelly, J. (2006) Iraq, Vietnam, and the dilemmas of United States soldiers. Open Democracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/iraq_vietnam_3588jsp/
Pettegrew, J. 2015. Light It Up: The Marine Eye for Battle in the War for Iraq. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Plamper, J. 2009. Emotional Turn? Feelings in Russian History and Culture. Introduction. Slavic Review, 68(2), pp. 229-237.
Plamper, J. 2017. History of Emotions: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reddy, W. 2001. The Navigation of Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rosenwein, B. 2010. Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions Passion in Context. https://www.passionsincontext.de/uploads/media/01_Rosenwein.pdf
Scheer, M. 2012. Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and Is That What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuan Approach to Understanding Emotion. History and Theory 51(2):193-220.
Spiller, R. 1988. S. L. A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire. RUSI Journal, 133(4): 63–71.
Stouffer, SA et al 1949. The American Soldier. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
van der Haven, C. 2016. Drill and Allocution as Emotional Practices in Seventeenth-century Dutch Poetry, Plays and Military Treatises. In: Kuijpers, E. and C. der Haven (eds) Battlefield Emotions 1500–1800: Practices, Experience, Imagination. London: Palgrave.
von Schell, A. 2013. Battle Leadership. Brattleboro, VT: Echo Point Books.
Wikan, U. 1989. Managing the Heart to Brighten Face and Soul: Emotions in Balinese Morality and Health Care. American Ethnologist 16 (2): 294-312.
Wilcox, V. 2012. ‘Weeping tears of blood’: Exploring Italian soldiers’ emotions in the First World War. Modern Italy. 17(2): 171-184.