Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the way reflexivity has been present or absent in military studies, namely in the subfield of armed forces and society, through a selective review of existing literature. It provides a general overview of the various non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or think tanks and universities that have a military/security focus in their research and teaching. The book aims to understand the bi-directional effects that relations between anthropology and war have on one another: how war seems to produce new concepts and relations in anthropology, and simultaneously how anthropology seems to produce new tools and objects in military relations. It draws on the personal experience of the author as a PhD student working on the French Land Forces. It contends that being simultaneously a female PhD student in political sciences working on the French Army.