ABSTRACT
The life course perspective, and particularly the concepts of linked lives, location in time and place, and lifelong development, has proven to be a useful frame for research in military sociology. Janowitz had taught political sociology at the University of Michigan after finishing his doctoral degree at Chicago; when he returned to Chicago as a professor, Michigan hired Charles C. Moskos as its political sociologist. Moskos moved to Northwestern University in 1966. The conversion to a volunteer army was an historical event that greatly influenced theory and research in military sociology, as well as our shared life course. Maryland alumni have played leadership roles at military academies, including two directors of the Sociology Program and the director of Leadership and Management Studies at West Point, two heads of the Department of Leadership, Ethics, and Law as well as two directors of the Division of Leadership Education and Development at the Naval Academy.
