A Structural Comparison of Spatial Organization in Conventional and Unconventional Military Systems: the Case of the 1954 Algerian Revolution.

We use the Algerian Revolutionary War to do two things of theoretical and substantive importance: to reconsider space as an organizing concept in human behavior, and to direct the attention of military sociology to the study of field operations. Military operational behavior is based on the assumption that space is related to social behavior: military systems control the behavior of the opposition, and of themselves, by controlling the space in which that behavior occurs. This is not just a matter of territoriality, the control of space includes controlling both 'what the space means' and how it is to be exploited. Military systems actively reify operational environments. Most important, the operational environments reified by military systems have organizational consequences. It is these organizational consequences that attract our attention in Algeria in 1954.Ph.D.SociologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159713/1/8402254.pd