Despite constituting the formal mechanism by which states and militaries persuade and enrol their personnel, military recruitment is poorly understood in the social and political sciences. Tied either to a normative and partisan sociology which aims to provide applied solutions for recruitment and retention programmes, or subsumed under a broad banner, by critical scholars, of a global ‘cultural condition’ of militarisation, studies of recruitment lack the rigour they should be afforded. In exploring these issues, the paper offers a vision of critical military studies which takes seriously the efforts of counter-military recruiting activist and protest movements in the US and UK. Counter-recruitment activism is billed as the most practical way to resist policies of militarism and militarisation. In promoting locally situated, practical solutions to the effects of militarised cultures (often as part of activism in schools), it aims to expose the relationship between, and acts to correct, both local and global injustices. In reviewing the practical and conceptual basis for counter-recruiting strategies, and speaking to broader movements in feminist scholarship on militarisation, the paper demonstrates the importance of critical studies of military recruitment, and in so doing, argues for a critical military studies which is situated amidst the people and places militarism affects.

Flyer on a San Diego campaign to restrict military recruiting and give high school students balanced access to information on options after high school.

UCSC Career Center Policy
• NACE Principles for Employment Professionals
• NACE Principles for Career Service Professionals
• 1984 UCOP Letter to Chancellors
• STATEMENT OF COMPLIANCE
• 1983 UC POLICY ON NONDISCRIMINATION ON BASIS OF SEXUAL
ORIENTATION
• AALS Position on the Military’s "Don’t ask, don’t tell" Policy
• Ameliorative Measures
• 2002 Dean Robert C.UCSC Career Center Policy
• NACE Principles for Employment Professionals
• NACE Principles for Career Service Professionals
• 1984 UCOP Letter to Chancellors
• STATEMENT OF COMPLIANCE
• 1983 UC POLICY ON NONDISCRIMINATION ON BASIS OF SEXUAL
ORIENTATION
• AALS Position on the Military’s "Don’t ask, don’t tell" Policy
• Ameliorative Measures
• 2002 Dean Robert C.Clark Announces Change to HLS Military
Recruiting Policy
UCSC

The Best Practices for Social Media Campaigning for Social Justice Organizing report covers the basic recommendations of how to use the big three social media platforms of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter with an emphasis on promoting social justice issues tailored for counter military recruiting.

The Selene Rivas report explores how the U.S. citizenry has been normalized to accept a permanent state of militarism through popular culture: Movies, video games and comic books.

35 pp, 2017, The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth. PDF

Selene Rivas presents a series of brief articles exploring how the U.S. citizenry has been normalized to accept a permanent state of militarism through popular culture: Movies, video games and comic books.

"Over the course of this series, we have explored several concepts which are building blocks for the social sciences (“normal”, “normalization”), which in turn have helped us understand and define “militarism” and “militarization”. After this, we dove into the transformative potential found within popular culture: how can it affect the people who consume it? "

Selene Rivas