In this paper, I explore the applicability of sociological institutionalism for the analysis of security and the military. Based on cross-sectional data from 50 countries, I show how values linked to the nation state and security are related to world cultural ideas and the diffusion of...

Within military culture there is a protected version of masculinity. The theory of symbolic resources (Zittoun, Duveen, Gillespie, Ivinson & Psaltis, 2003) recognises that people are positioned within different symbolic streams in the socio-cultural world, in which they can be displaced or can...