Centre for International Conflict Analysis and Management (CICAM), Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, Postbus 9108, 6500 HK, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Soc Sci Med. 2018 Aug;211:314-320. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.06.042. Epub 2018 Jun 30.
The last decade has witnessed fast-growing scholarly interest in the concept of moral injury, which addresses the link between the ethics of military intervention and deployment-related suffering. However, current research on moral injury, predominantly psychological in nature, tends to approach the phenomenon as an internally contained disorder. Consequently, it medicalizes moral injury and de-contextualizes it from the people who send soldiers to conflict zones and 'welcome' them back. This article addresses the ways in which the experience of moral injury is embedded in and shaped by public debates on military intervention, drawing on relevant literature from the fields of psychology, philosophy, and social sciences, and on in-depth qualitative interviews collected in 2016 and 2017 with 80 Dutch veterans. The article examines the explicit public condemnation experienced by Dutch veterans deployed to Bosnia as peacekeepers, and the more subtle public misunderstanding experienced by Dutch veterans deployed to Afghanistan as combat soldiers. It demonstrates that public criticism and admiration may both be experienced as misrecognition, and, in turn, societal misrecognition may directly or indirectly contribute to moral injury. Moreover, not only soldiers and veterans may struggle with the moral significance of military intervention, but society as well.
过去十年，学界对道德创伤这一概念表现出浓厚的兴趣，该概念涉及军事干预的伦理与与部署相关的苦难之间的联系。然而，当前关于道德创伤的研究主要是心理学性质的，往往将这一现象视为一种内在的紊乱。因此，它将道德创伤医学化，并将其与将士兵派往冲突地区并“欢迎”他们回来的人隔离开来。本文通过借鉴心理学、哲学和社会科学领域的相关文献，并通过 2016 年至 2017 年期间对 80 名荷兰退伍军人进行的深入定性访谈，探讨了道德创伤体验是如何嵌入并受军事干预公共辩论影响的。文章考察了派往波斯尼亚执行维和任务的荷兰退伍军人所经历的公开谴责，以及派往阿富汗执行战斗任务的荷兰退伍军人所经历的更微妙的公众误解。研究表明，公众的批评和赞赏都可能被视为误解，而社会的误解可能直接或间接地导致道德创伤。此外，不仅士兵和退伍军人可能会对军事干预的道德意义感到困惑，社会也会如此。
