The Sociology of War and Violence

Half-title......Page 3
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Dedication......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Introduction: war, violence and the social......Page 13
The cumulative bureaucratisation of coercion......Page 17
Centrifugal ideologisation......Page 20
The plan of the book......Page 23
Part I Collective violence and sociological theory......Page 27
Introduction......Page 29
The ‘holy trinity’ and organised violence......Page 30
Durkheim: pacifism, war and solidarity......Page 32
Marx: capitalism and revolutionary violence......Page 34
Weber: rationalisation through violence......Page 37
The bellicose tradition in classical social thought......Page 40
German belligerent statism......Page 41
Austro-American group struggle paradigm......Page 45
German sociological libertarianism......Page 48
Italian elite theory......Page 50
Anglo-American evolutionary theory......Page 53
Franco-German metaphysics of violence......Page 55
The contemporary relevance of bellicose thought......Page 57
Introduction......Page 62
The sources of violence and warfare: biology, reason or culture?......Page 63
Genetic seeds of warfare?......Page 64
Homo economicus and the violent conflict......Page 70
The cultural foundations of war and violence......Page 76
Organisational materialism: war, violence and the state......Page 82
From coercion to ideology......Page 91
Conclusion......Page 96
Part II War in time and space......Page 99
Introduction......Page 101
Collective violence before warfare......Page 102
War and violence in antiquity......Page 104
War and violence in the medieval era......Page 114
The institutional seeds of early modernity: war, violence and the birth of discipline......Page 121
Conclusion......Page 128
Introduction......Page 130
Modernity and violence: an ontological dissonance?......Page 131
The cumulative bureaucratisation of coercion......Page 132
The centrifugal ideologisation of coercion......Page 142
War and violence between ideology and social organisation......Page 153
Conclusion......Page 157
Introduction......Page 158
The old world......Page 159
China......Page 161
India......Page 165
The Ottoman Empire......Page 168
Russia......Page 171
Japan......Page 174
Sub-Saharan Africa......Page 177
Latin America......Page 180
North America......Page 182
Conclusion......Page 186
Part III Warfare: ideas and practices......Page 189
Introduction......Page 191
The naturalist fallacy......Page 192
The formative canard......Page 196
Centrifugal ideologisation and nationalism......Page 203
The cumulative bureaucratisation of coercion and nationalism......Page 208
Conclusion......Page 212
Introduction......Page 214
Social control......Page 215
Truth and deception......Page 219
The democratic origins of war propaganda......Page 223
Modernity of war propaganda......Page 227
Killing, dying and micro-level solidarity......Page 231
Conclusion......Page 244
Part IV War, violence and social divisions......Page 247
Introduction......Page 249
Stratification without collective violence?......Page 250
Stratification through war and violence......Page 254
Warfare and the origins of social stratification......Page 264
Justifying social hierarchies......Page 276
Conclusion......Page 285
Introduction......Page 287
The innate masculinity of combat?......Page 288
Cultural givens?......Page 296
The patriarchal legacy?......Page 300
War and the cumulative bureaucratisation of gender roles......Page 307
War and the centrifugal ideologisation of gender roles......Page 314
Conclusion......Page 319
Part V Organised violence in the twenty-first century......Page 321
Introduction......Page 323
The new-wars paradigm......Page 324
The sociology of new warfare......Page 327
Warfare between the nation-state and globalisation......Page 331
The objectives of contemporary wars......Page 336
What is old and what is new?......Page 341
Conclusion......Page 344
References......Page 348
Index......Page 371