IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cdanxx/v39y2023i4p452-480.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What’s in a name? Confucian considerations for referring to U.S. military contractors

Author

Listed:
  • Caroline Batka

Abstract

Stakeholders use a number of different terms to refer to the contractors supporting expeditionary military operations. Often, these terms are inconsistently-applied, stigmatising, and unclear. This analysis uses the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) as a case study for exploring the efforts that the U.S. military has taken to improve contractor terminology. The study finds that DoD uses the terms contractor, contractor personnel, and contractor employee to refer to organisations, groups of employees, and individual employees providing outsourced expeditionary services. DoD also uses a number of more specific terms to refer to certain contractors and relationships. However, there are gaps and inconsistencies in DoD’s terminological scheme, and challenges remain in differentiating contractors from other actors in war and in reconciling terminology across the U.S. Government and the international community. By contextualising DoD contractor terminology within the framework of the Confucian Rectification of Names, this study offers insights regarding contractors’ normative roles.

Suggested Citation

  • Caroline Batka, 2023. "What’s in a name? Confucian considerations for referring to U.S. military contractors," Defense & Security Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 452-480, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:cdanxx:v:39:y:2023:i:4:p:452-480
    DOI: 10.1080/14751798.2023.2257483
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14751798.2023.2257483
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/14751798.2023.2257483?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:cdanxx:v:39:y:2023:i:4:p:452-480. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CDAN20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.