16 Armed Forces & Society Volume 35 Number 1 October 2008 16-35 © 2008 Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. All rights reserved. 10.1177/0095327X07301047 http://afs.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com Teaching Sociology at Saint- Cyr, 1983-2004 and Beyond A Personal Account Bernard Boëne University of Rennes This article recounts the course of sociology as a teaching subject at the French mili- tary academy from the personal perspective of one of its local protagonists. Having placed its introduction in context, it points up the motives behind a reform of studies (1982) which gave academic education greater scope and in which sociology played a central part. It goes through the various stages in the institution-building process that led from initially mixed reception to full internal acceptance as part of a common core of subjects. It analyzes the reasons for another major reconsideration, in 2000, of cur- ricula and avenues of access, which endorsed and radicalized the previous reform’s phi- losophy and turned sociology into a truly pivotal discipline—one that allows better integration of the academic and military sides of officer education. It assesses, in con- clusion, the factors behind such a (fragile) success story. Keywords: sociology; officer education; Saint-Cyr; French Army Background Despite the classic parallel drawn by Auguste Comte between industrial and mili- tary order, 1 and the huge problems involved in managing mass armed forces from the Third Republic onward, the French armed services paid scant attention to sociology and its possible uses until very late into the twentieth century. Teaching it was never seriously considered until 1982. True, midway through the First World War, the minister of ordnance production had succeeded in mobilizing a large fraction of the (very few) sociology professors of the time in the cause of victory. Durkheim himself brought active moral support to the war effort. But few traces were left of that collaboration during the interwar years. In 1926, Capt. Charles de Gaulle, then head of the History department at Saint-Cyr, noted in typical visionary fashion that sociology ought to be introduced into the academy’s syllabus. 2 His advice went unheeded by his superiors. Over two decades later, following the publication in 1949 of Stouffer’s classic edited volumes on the social psychology of the American soldier in World War II, keen interest was