Contemporary Sociology and War

The study of war was a major topic when sociology was making its first institutional steps at the turn of the twentieth century. The leading names of fin de siècle sociology, such as Ludwig Gumplowicz, Otto Hintze, Emil Lederer, Franz Oppenheimer, Gustav Ratzenhofer, Alexander Rüstow and Lester Ward, all wrote extensively about the relationship between war and society [Joas Reference Joas2003; Malešević Reference Malešević2010a, Reference Malešević2010b; Mann Reference Mann1988]. Their research centred on a range of topics, including the impact of war on state formation, the link between warrior castes and parliamentary institutions, the origins of social inequalities and organised violence, or the relationship between capitalism and war. After the Second World War much of this scholarship was forgotten, disregarded or mischaracterised as belonging to the notorious “social Darwinist” camp [Joas Reference Joas2003; Malešević Reference Malešević2010b].

The analysis of organised violence was just important for the better known classics, including Marx, Engels, Weber, Durkheim, Spencer, Simmel and Addams. Marx and Engles explored the relationship between capitalism and revolutionary violence and also analysed warfare as a generator of social change. Weber identified organised violence as a foundation of state power and linked the process of rationalisation to the expansion of discipline, coercive power and war. Durkheim traced the dynamics of group solidarity in times of violent conflict and showed how egoistic and anomic suicides decrease during wartime. Spencer differentiated between militant, war-prone and collectivist societies and industrial, highly individualised societies, arguing that in the former a nation becomes an army, while in the later trade rather than force dominates social relationships. Simmel coined the term “absolute situation” to explain social life in times of war. He argued that in the context of war, there are no relative situations anymore and all decisions become decisions about life and death [Malešević Reference Malešević2010a: 20–44]. Jane Addams pioneered a feminist approach to the study of war and peace.

For much of the twentieth century and the first decade of this century, however, sociologists have either ignored the study of warfare or have downplayed the significance of war in social changeFootnote ¹ [Centeno and Enriquez Reference Centeno and Enriquez2016; Kestnbaum Reference Kestnbaum2009; Malešević and Olsson Reference Malešević, Olsson and McCallum2022; Wimmer Reference Wimmer2014]. The leading names of contemporary European sociology, such as Margaret Archer, Giovanni Arrighi, Pierre Bourdieu, Manuel Castells, Jon Elster, Gøsta Esping-Andersen, Karin Knorr-Cetina, Bruno Latour or Niklas Luhmann, to name but a few, have written countless studies on a vast range of topics but have never systematically engaged with the relationship between war and society. This seems rather odd, as no other social phenomenon has shaped human life on this planet as much as warfare. Since the time when human beings adopted a sedentary lifestyle, approximately 10–12,000 years ago, war has been one of the central drivers of social change [Centeno and Enriquez Reference Centeno and Enriquez2016; Malešević Reference Malešević2010a; Mann Reference Mann2023]. Although they have given rise to unparalleled carnage and destruction, resulting in millions of deaths and injuries, and centuries of transgenerational trauma, wars have also directly influenced the development of science and technology, economic growth and social progress. Nearly every aspect of social life, including governance structures, social hierarchies, gender and sexual relations, religious identities, class dynamics, ethno-racial stratification, educational practices, health systems and administrative apparatuses, has been moulded by the legacies of different wars. Warfare has influenced state formation and has given birth to different forms of polity, from the early city states, capstone empires and patrimonial kingdoms to modernising imperial systems and contemporary nation-states [Centeno and Enriquez Reference Centeno and Enriquez2016; Hall Reference Hall2024; Wimmer Reference Wimmer2012]. War has also fashioned socio-political orders, including the development of democratic institutions, the rise of parliamentary systems, the creation of welfare schemes, the delegitimisation of racism and advancement in gender relations [Malešević Reference Malešević2017; Reference Malešević2010a]. The legacy of war is directly linked to the transformation of religious and secular ideologies, including the emergence and spread of imperialism, nationalism, religious fundamentalism, doctrines of the civilising mission, settler colonialism, fascism, Nazism and globalisation. War has shaped the character of modern societies just as much, including the nature of capitalism, the extent of urbanisation, the dynamics of secularisation and general social modernisation [Giddens Reference Giddens1985; Joas Reference Joas2003; Mann Reference Mann2023, Reference Mann1993]. Thus, while war should be one of the most important topics of sociological research, many leading names in sociology remain uninterested in it.

When major social theorists such as Hartmut Rosa [Reference Rosa2015] or Ulrich Beck [Reference Beck2003] engage with war, the tendency has been for them to downplay its significance in the contemporary world. They both wrongly interpret warfare as a phenomenon that is on the wane. For Beck,[2003: 255] war is one of the “historically obsolete” concepts that “continue to govern our thinking and acting.” In Rosa’s understanding, modern militaries are dysfunctional in a world of ever increasing acceleration: “today one must expect from the dynamisation of warfare the forthright inversion of the relations of classical modernity, namely, the demilitarisation of war, [and] the decline of the monopoly of violence.” In a similar way, building in part on Kant’s cosmopolitanism, Habermas [Reference Habermas2006: 105, 172] emphasises procedural sovereignty as a mechanism that can overcome warfare and generate a cosmopolitan political order. He argues that “total war” belongs to “the era of nationalistic mass mobilisations,” while today the world faces smaller asymmetrical conflicts that “frequently result from “failing states,” that is, from the collapse of a state authority that fragments into an unholy mixture of ethnonationalism, tribal feuds, international criminality, and civil war, terrorism.” In his understanding, the ever expanding juridification of international relations can bring “justice between nations” and thus prevent future wars. These general theoretical accounts leave no room for the continuous impact of warfare on social change. While Rosa’s theory of acceleration mostly ignores the coercive side of social life and consequently disregards the importance of state and military power, in Beck’s understanding of risk society there is not even a possibility of the existence of warfare in late modernity. Although Habermas is more realistic in accounting for different forms of organised violence, he too downplays the significance of inter-state wars in the contemporary world and makes no analytical space for the possibility of major wars in Europe.

Given that the leading European sociologists have generally disregarded the study of war or have mischaracterised its historical trajectory, it is no surprise that many social theorists and sociological researchers were analytically unprepared to explain the return of major war and the consequent mass military mobilisation on the European continent.

Although the contemporary sociology of war has existed as a niche research area since the 1980s, it was really only in the aftermath of the 1990s Yugoslav wars, and the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan that gave impetus to new research on the relationship between war and society [Centeno and Enriquez Reference Centeno and Enriquez2016; Kestnbaum Reference Kestnbaum2009; Malešević and Olsson Reference Malešević, Olsson and McCallum2022; Wimmer Reference Wimmer2014]. Since then, sociologists have produced substantial research on different aspects of this phenomenon. After many decades of disciplinary neglect, the study of war is currently experiencing a mini-renaissance. In some respects, the return of war as a research area long preceded the return of war as a social reality in Europe. Over the past two decades, sociologists of war have made significant advancements in several research areas, including scholarship on (a) the historical trajectory of organised violence; (b) the transformation of warfare and its impact on society; (c) the relationship between social stratification and war; (d) warfare and state formation; and (e) the micro-sociology of war experience. This article will assess how each of these five research areas can help us to understand the return of war in Europe. I will argue that, although all these sociological contributions are insightful and significant, only some of them have devised analytical frameworks that can adequately explain the historical dynamics of organised violence, and particularly the relationship between war and social order over long periods of time. The article will make a case that the blending of longue durée macro-sociological analysis with the micro-sociology of war experience can help us to better understand the recent return of war in Europe.

The Historical Trajectory of Organised Violence

Norbert Elias [(1939) Reference Elias2000, (1969) Reference Elias1983] was one of the first sociologists systematically to analyse the long-term trajectories of violence. In his highly influential early studies, he explores the relationship between violence and civilisation. He contrasts these two phenomena and argues that violence experienced a gradual and continuous decline as the civilising process fostered the expansion of societal control and the internalisation of self-restraint. In The Civilising Process [2000] Elias zooms in on the changes in everyday manners in the medieval and early modern Europe. He aims to show how “violent impulses” dominated medieval European societies, in which, in his understanding, people were “wild, cruel, [and] prone to violent outbreaks”[Elias Reference Elias, Goudsblom and Mennell1998: 23]. Once “the elimination contests” intensify, states acquire the monopoly on violence and taxation and the civilising process tames violent action in society. Elias [Reference Elias1983] focuses on absolutist states in which increased internal pacification transformed the violent aristocratic warriors into peaceful and well-mannered courtiers. In this new environment, the aristocrats adopted refined manners and self-restraint as status markers to differentiate themselves from the rising influence of the bourgeoisie. In this approach, the advance of the civilising process fostered the continuous decline of all forms of violence.

The Eliasian perspective has been developed substantially over the past several decades and scholars have explored different aspects of the relationship between civilisation and violence. Some neo-Eliasian and neo-Darwinian analysts have focused on providing empirical evidence for the thesis that all forms of violence have declined substantially over the course of human history [Eisner Reference Eisner2003; Gat Reference Gat2013; Pinker Reference Pinker2011; Ray Reference Ray2018]. Others have made theoretical innovations and have further developed key Eliasian concepts, such as “decivilisation” or “survival units” to account for some notable historical aberrations [Kaspersen Reference Kaspersen2022; Savoia Landini and Dépelteau Reference Landini and Dépelteau2017]. For example, Kaspersen [Reference Kaspersen2022: 58] has articulated a Neo-Eliasian processual-relational perspective to explain how warfare has transformed the principal form of “survival units” that are conceptualised as “the fundamental structuring principle of social life.” For Kaspersen “survival units,” also referred to as “attack and defence units” are the direct product of different legacies of warfare. Other neo-Eliasian scholars have focused more directly on demonstrating that most forms of violence have experienced a downward trend. Pinker [Reference Pinker2011: xxi] initiated this debate by providing extensive evidence across time to argue that “today we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species’ existence.” In his interpretation, the decline of violence can be explained by “the humanitarian revolution” and “gentle trade” as Enlightenment philosophy and a widening sense of empathy gradually spread throughout the world. Other scholars, such as Eisner [Reference Eisner2003], Gat [Reference Gat2013] and Goldstein [2011] have made similar arguments while focusing on more specific periods of history. They all reiterate Elias’ distinction between violence and civilisation and see human beings in Hobbesian terms as inherently violent. The key point of this perspective is that as civilisation advances and states attain monopolies on the legitimate use of violence and taxation, they force individuals to internalise self-restraint and to avoid the use of violence in everyday conduct.

Neo-Eliasian scholarship has been valuable in fostering the process-oriented analysis of social reality. However, its naturalistic ontology, combined with an inflexible commitment to directional development, has not proved particularly beneficial for understanding the return of war in Europe. Because neo-Eliasians posit violence as the absolute Other of civilisation, they cannot explain the direction of organised violence in the contemporary world nor the particular experience of recent wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, Ethiopia, Iran or Myanmar. As Dwyer [Reference Dwyer2022], Malešević [Reference Malešević2017] and Mann [Reference Mann2023] show there has been no decline of violence in history. Mann [Reference Mann2023] is critical of “liberal optimists” who tend to over-rely on highly problematic databases, such as the Correlates of War, which do not include the casualties of colonial wars or the murderous ethnic cleansing of various imperial conquests. Even one of the most cataclysmic events in history, the genocide of Native Americans, which resulted, in the Americas as a whole, in more than 100 million deaths—over 90 percent of the indigenous population—is not recorded in such databases. For Mann, the historical record shows that organised violence has neither declined nor risen. While agreeing with many of these points Dwyer [Reference Dwyer2022] and Malešević [Reference Malešević2017] argue that most forms of organised violence—including wars, revolutions, genocides and terrorism—have increased in modernity. Malešević [Reference Malešević2017] questions the uncritical use of many premodern sources in which depictions of violence are deliberately exaggerated for political, didactic or even stylistic reasons. Drawing on anthropological and archaeological research he aims to demonstrate that organised violence emerged late in human history and that wars have become more prevalent only in the past five thousand years, as sedentary lifestyles became dominant throughout the world. Malešević [Reference Malešević2022, Reference Malešević2017] also emphasises ever increasing coercive-organisational capacities, society-wide ideological penetration and the ability of social organisations to successfully penetrate the micro-universe of everyday life. These developments have created new opportunities for the mass-scale use of violence, but also for its normalisation and naturalisation. Dwyer [Reference Dwyer2022: 110–112] also argues that violence was not common in prehistory and that new forms of organised violence, such as incarceration, human trafficking and novel types of slavery, have all dramatically increased in the contemporary world: “there are more slaves in the world today than existed during the whole of the Atlantic slave trade.”

Because neo-Eliasian sociologists offer a trend theory that links the rise of the civilising process to the internal pacification of social order, they cannot adequately explain the mass killings of civilians and the complete destruction of the habitat in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine or any other recent war. Neo-Eliasians usually describe recent wars as periodic “de-civilising spurts,” situations in which the civilising process temporarily goes into reverse. However, such ad hoc accounts are completely inadequate to deal with the continuous presence of large-scale warfare all over the globe. The unprecedented scale of destruction in recent wars clearly indicates that organised violence is far from being in decline. According to recent studies, political violence increased by 25% globally in 2024 compared with 2023 and there was a twofold increase in global conflicts between 2019 and 2024 [ACLED 2025]. Scholars have identified 50 nation-states that are experiencing active violent conflict, which is substantially more than a decade ago. The intensity of wars and the scale of human casualties has increased substantially, with 37% more individual deaths “compared with the previous year-long period” [Euronews 2024]. The number of war refugees is at its highest level since records started: in June 2024, more than 122.6 million people had been forcibly removed from their homes and 43.7 million had been made refugees [UNHCR 2024].

Even if one confines one’s attention to Europe, the outbreak of a major war between territorially the two largest states on the continent shows that there has been no downward trend in organised violence, as claimed by neo-Eliasians. The war in Ukraine has been characterised by huge devastation, with over 41,783 civilian casualties, 4 million internally displaced people, 6.8 million refugees who have found sanctuary in other countries, and 14.6 million people relying on humanitarian aid [UNHCR 2024]. Moreover, this war has caused vast military casualties. Although it is difficult to be certain how many soldiers have lost their lives, conservative appraisals point to at least 165,000 Russian and up to 100,000 Ukrainian military casualties.Footnote ² However, other researchers estimate that the actual death tolls are much higher, possibly over a million.Footnote ³ Hence, the global expansion of organised violence, with enormous numbers of fatalities, and the return of major inter-state war in Europe cannot be adequately explained through the prism of neo-Eliasian theory.

New Wars?

Another influential area of research within the contemporary sociology of organised violence focuses on the transformation of warfare and its impact on society. Scholars of war across different disciplines regularly point out that, from the late 1940s onwards, civil wars have replaced inter-state wars as the dominant form of warfare [Duffy-Toft Reference Duffy-Toft2024; Hironaka Reference Hironaka2008; Kalyvas Reference Kalyvas2006]. That is, since the 1940s there have been 136 violent conflicts that can be categorised as civil wars compared with only 45 inter-state wars. The number of civil wars reached its apex in 2019, with 54 such violent conflicts all over the globe [Duffy-Toft Reference Duffy-Toft2024: 20–39]. Because civil wars are usually perceived to be more brutal and destructive to the social fabric than wars between states, civil wars have received more attention from sociologists. Some researchers have focused on the changing relationships between inter- and intra-state wars and their wider impact on social order. In this context Zygmunt Bauman [Reference Bauman2017, Reference Bauman2001, Reference Bauman2006] links the transformation of warfare to global neoliberal capitalism and the structural shift from a relatively orderly and stable or solid modernity towards an unregulated and turbulent liquid modernity. While in previous periods modernity was centred on self-discipline, centralisation of authority, and achieving an orderly totality within the compact territorial organisation of nation-states, “liquid” modernity favours fluidity, individualisation and non-territorial attachments. Whereas in the classic modern era populations were strongly attached to their nation-states, in liquid modernity most people have been transformed into extra-territorial individualised consumers. Bauman [Reference Bauman2001] argues that most wars waged in the period of liquid modernity prioritise mobility over spatial domination. Instead of territorial control the focus shifts to the free flow of global markets. He differentiates between the globalising wars waged at a distance by Western powers, which rely on high-tech weaponry, and globalisation-induced civil wars that have emerged in an environment of collapsing state structures in the non-Western world. In his view, the globalisation-induced wars are particularly brutal because they involve chaotic conditions of state collapse in which local warlords deliberately target civilians.

Mary Kaldor [Reference Kaldor2006, Reference Kaldor2018] and Martin Shaw [Reference Shaw2003, Reference Shaw2005, Reference Shaw2015] also identify neoliberal globalisation as a structural phenomenon that underpins the transformation of warfare. They also emphasise the structural differences between the industrialised total wars of the twentieth century and the new wars of the twenty-first century. Kaldor [Reference Kaldor2006] coined the term “new wars” to argue that such conflicts emerge in the context of a “globalised new economy” in which state sovereignty has been eroded by the destructive forces of economic liberalisation. In such an environment, governments gradually lose their monopoly on the legitimate use of coercive power and violence becomes privatised and widespread. “New wars” transpire when paramilitary formations use the remnants of the state structure to politicise ethnic and religious differences in order to divide populations and control their own fiefdoms. Kaldor argues that these new wars are, as a rule, civil wars, which result in very high civilian casualties, decentralised violence and difficulties differentiating between private and public, civilian and military, or legal and illegal operations. Most of all, “new wars” are viewed as being very different from “old wars” in their aims: “the goals of new wars are about identity politics in contrast to the geo-political or ideological goals of earlier wars” [Kaldor Reference Kaldor2006: 7].

Shaw [Reference Shaw2005] also differentiates sharply between the traditional wars of the twentieth century and the new forms of warfare. He also emphasises the role of neoliberal capitalism in fostering the escalation of global violence. In this context, he articulates the idea of “risk transfer” wars. Drawing on Ulrich Beck’s theory of risk society Shaw sees exposure to risk as the dominant form of social inequality in the contemporary world. In zones of violent conflict, this phenomenon takes the form of “risk transfer wars.” For technologically advanced states, this entails minimising exposure to life-threatening situations by transferring deadly risks to the civilian populations of enemy countries. By relying on technologically advanced weaponry, such as the stealth planes, long-distance missiles, or drones, Western powers are able to minimise the direct participation of their soldiers in theatres of war. At the same time, and despite the rhetoric of military precision, they increase the life-threatening risk situations to civilian populations living in the war zones. Shaw [Reference Shaw2003, Reference Shaw2015] also analyses the proliferation of civil wars throughout the world and argues that contemporary warfare has become more genocidal over the years. While in previous centuries, wars were mainly conflicts between soldiers, in late modernity wars tend to deliberately target civilians. In this context genocide becomes a form of warfare—it is a violent social conflict “between armed power organisations that aim to destroy civilian social groups and those groups and other actors who resist this destruction” [Shaw Reference Shaw2015: 5].

More recently, scholars such as Barbara Walter [Reference Walter2017] have adopted the notion of “new new civil wars.” She argues that while “new wars” is a concept that can account for the variety of civil wars fought until 2003, in the past two decades we have witnessed a different type of civil war. These “new new civil wars” differ from their earlier counterparts in three main ways: (a) they are waged mainly in majority Muslim societies; (b) most of the warring factions advocate some form of Islamist ideology; and (c) the warring sides tend to pursue transnational rather than national war aims [Walter Reference Walter2017: 469].

The “new war” paradigm has proved useful in situating the transformation of warfare in the context of wider macro-structural changes. Bauman, Kaldor, Shaw and Walter have successfully linked contemporary civil wars to major changes in late modernity, including globalisation, the direction of neoliberal capitalism and the weakening of state power in some parts of the world. However, this approach is also characterised by pronounced weaknesses, including its economic reductionism, an ahistorical understanding of civil wars and a lack of geopolitical awareness in the context of territorial control.

For one thing, the “new war” paradigm overemphasises the role of economic globalisation in the proliferation of recent wars. The transformations in world economy cannot account for the very different trajectories of civil wars around the world. For example, states that have been more directly affected by globalising capitalist fluctuations and have experienced near bankruptcy, such as Greece or Argentina, did not collapse into civil war, while states less exposed to the global economy, such as Congo, Libya, Somalia or Syria, have all experienced devastating and protracted civil wars [Malešević Reference Malešević2010a: 320]. Furthermore, this approach does not adequately engage with historical experiences of organised violence and thus wrongly overemphasises the novelty of inter-state warfare. As Kalyvas [Reference Kalyvas2006] and Newman [2014] show convincingly, the privatisation of violence is far from being a recent development. It has been a dominant feature of many guerrilla wars, insurgencies and civil conflicts throughout history. The most significant weakness of the “new wars” perspective, however, is its geopolitical blindness. Both Bauman and Kaldor insist that in late modernity the acquisition and control of territory have become irrelevant. For Bauman, new wars are extraterritorial and are centred mainly on reconnaissance interventions. He argues that “the times of mass conscript armies are over and so is the time of ideological mobilisation, [and] patriotic ecstasies” [Bauman Reference Bauman2001: 27]. Similarly, Kaldor [Reference Kaldor2006: 6] contends that “the goals of the new wars are about identity politics in contrast to the geopolitical or ideological goals of earlier wars.” This view flies in the face of sociological reality. The military power of contemporary nation-states is rooted in their monopolistic control over specific territories. It is precisely because of this monopoly that national territory has become sacrosanct in the post-Second World War geopolitical order. The Russian attempt to conquer Ukraine has nearly universally been deemed illegitimate as it represents a blatant attempt to demolish the existing geopolitical order. This is a war of territorial conquest in which geopolitical calculation looms large. Thus Bauman’s contention that the “era of space is over” does not stand. Territory remains the cornerstone of geopolitical realities.

The “new wars” perspective is ill suited to explaining the return of warfare in Europe. This approach overemphasises the shift from inter- to intra-state wars and the privatisation of organised violence, neither of which characterise the violent conflict in Ukraine. Rather than being a species of “new war” this protracted conflict is a typical example of inter-state warfare. As in other inter-state wars, this conflict is waged mainly in theatres of war, on frontlines and the vast battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Unlike civil wars, which often result in higher civilian casualties, the majority of fatalities in this war are soldiers. On the Russian side, 99% of all casualties have been military, while on the Ukrainian side the civilian casualties are much higher, but more than 60% are soldiers [The Economist 2024].Footnote ⁴ This war is not characterised by decentralised violence or a blurring of civilian and military or of public and private, as in “new wars.” Instead, this is a highly centralised conflict waged by the Russian and Ukrainian chiefs of the General Staff, respectively, and with clear division of command and labour. This war is also being fought by large-scale regular armed forces: the Russian military has 1,320,000 active soldiers and over 2 million reservists, while the Ukrainian military has over 900,000 active soldiers and over 1.2 million reservists. Although both sides also rely on paramilitaries such forces are fully integrated into the formal military structure. Unlike in “new wars” both warring parties have introduced the military draft and have been able to conscript thousands of soldiers [Malešević Reference Malešević2023]. Thus despite its theoretical innovation and ability to explain some aspects of recent civil wars, the “new wars” paradigm has less to offer in accounting for the return of warfare in Europe. The war in Ukraine clearly demonstrates that inter-state wars are not a thing of the past and that control of territory remains just as important in the contemporary world as it was in previous inter-state wars.

Warfare and Social Cleavages

Much of contemporary sociological research has prioritised the mezzo level of analysis, putting the spotlight on key social divisions, such as class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity/race, or religious affiliation. Sociologists of war have made significant contributions to understanding the links between organised violence and gender relations. The starting point of this scholarship is the enormous gender disparity that historically has characterised wars. With very few exceptions combat zones remain male-centred domains. Even after many years of attempted gender balancing across the world, as Goldstein [Reference Goldstein2001: 10] notes, 99.9 percent of soldiers in the military forces of most countries are male. Sociological research indicates clearly that this consistent and continuous exclusion of women from the battlefield has less to do with anatomical or physiological gender differences than with the dynamics of social power. The gendering of war is thus a product of patriarchal social systems that maintain an ideological and organisational divide between the “active,” highly masculine, military sphere that privileges male-centred warrior ethics and the mostly feminine—and “passive”—civilian realm, in which women are depicted as weak and as such are denied agency [Enloe Reference Enloe2014, Reference Enloe2000; Geva Reference Geva2013; Viterna Reference Viterna2013]. Cyntia Enloe [Reference Enloe2014] has highlighted the almost habitual use of the phrase “women and children” when describing female subjectivity in a war context. She points out that this not only denies female agency but also infantilises women by treating them as being at the same level as children. She coined the term “womenandchildren” to capture this phenomenon. On the other hand, states tend to “militarise motherhood” by emphasising the responsibility of women for giving birth to and raising new generations of soldiers. For Enloe [Reference Enloe2000: 248] this ideological stance conceptualises “the womb as a recruiting station.” Sociologists of war have also explored how these patriarchal practices reinforce a gendered division of labour and foster very different patterns of socialisation for female and male children [Geva Reference Geva2013]. While in many social orders boys have traditionally been encouraged to engage in rough play, to avoid expressing emotions and to internalise aspects of aggressive masculinity, girls have often been taught to behave in the exact opposite way. As Goldstein [Reference Goldstein2001: 283] emphasises: “The omnipresent potential for war causes cultures to transform males, deliberately and systematically, by damaging their emotional capabilities…thus manhood, an artificial status that must be won individually, is typically constructed around a culture’s need for brave and disciplined soldiers.”

Researchers have also contrasted the gendered military experiences of regular armed forces and those of non-state actors. Guerrilla, insurgent and other non-state military forces tend to have much higher participation of women, and many of them participate fully in combat roles [Geva Reference Geva2013; Sjoberg Reference Sjoberg2014; Viterna Reference Viterna2013]. This finding indicates that the key determinants of female exclusion are not so much biological as organisational and ideological, as state militaries focus on preserving the status quo. Sociologists of war have also extensively explored the gendering of violence in times of violent conflict and in the aftermath of war. For example, scholars have explored different patterns of sexual violence and systematic rape across different conflicts [Sjoberg Reference Sjoberg2014; Wood Reference Wood2018]. Elisabeth Wood [Reference Wood2018] zooms in on the differences in the form and extent of sexual violence in various wars. She shows that in some conflicts rape is widespread and sometimes an integral part of ethnic cleansing, as was the case in wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina or Rwanda in the 1990s. In other conflicts, sexual violence was less present and sometimes even an ideological taboo. Wood argues that these differences can be explained in terms of the strategic choices of military and political leaderships, shared norms of combatants and different disciplinary regimes across military organisations. Walby and Shire [Reference Walby and Shire2024] have also analysed the links between domestic and sexual violence in the aftermath of violent conflicts and have found strong links between these types of violent action. As Sjoberg [Reference Sjoberg2014] shows, women’s participation in wars is much more diverse than is usually portrayed and gender remains one of the key aspects of modern warfare.

Another important form of social cleavage that impacts the relationship between war and society is ethnic/racial stratification. Since the pioneering work of Enloe [Reference Enloe1980], it has become apparent that military organisations systematically reproduce ethic and racial hierarchies. While in the colonial context, this was often part of the divide and rule policy that privileged ethic/racial minorities over subjugated majorities, in non-colonial settings both military and police operate as a repressive apparatus of the state to maintain the status quo. As Enloe [Reference Enloe1980: 113] argues: “Ethnic manipulations in militaries will decline only when the basis for the state’s maintenance is no longer stratification and coercion.” This coercive apparatus has historically played the central role in maintaining ethno-racial divides.

More recently, Julian Go [Reference Go2023, 2020] and Jason Lyall [Reference Lyall2020] have explored how the coercive power of states, as reflected in the ever-increasing capacity of military and police, have been linked to ethnic and racial stratification. Go [Reference Go2023] analyses the imperial origins of coercive policing practices across the globe. He zooms in on the United Kingdom and the United States and traces the imperial roots of police militarisation, starting in colonial settings such as British ruled India or the American controlled Philippines. He demonstrates convincingly that militarisation was deeply entangled with the ethno-racial hierarchies established and reinforced not only in the colonies but also in the home country. Lyall [Reference Lyall2020] explores the relationship between social inequalities within military organisations and performance on the battlefield. The key finding of his study is that ethnic and racial discrimination within the armed forces regularly leads to military ineffectiveness. Lyall emphasises that the unequal citizenship status of different ethnic and racial communities undermines the strength and cohesion of military organisation and ultimately of the entire social order.

Recent sociological research on the relationship between war and the main social cleavages has transformed our understanding of social relations. While historically mainstream sociology has been divided between neo-Marxist and neo-Weberian interpretations of social stratification, sociologists of war have successfully challenged both approaches. By pinpointing the deep historical links between organised violence and social divisions, sociologists of war have moved the debate forward. Hence, instead of a focus on class, status and party or the means of production recent scholarship emphasises the centrality of war and the means of destruction for the development of social stratification. In this context, war plays the central role in the emergence and proliferation of social cleavages, whether they be based on gender, class, status, race, ethnicity, religion or coloniality.

Nevertheless, this mezzo-level perspective also displays some explanatory weaknesses. Most approaches that focus on the relationship between war and social cleavages are ahistorical, do not engage with the wider geopolitical dynamics, and often overemphasise norm-centric social action. First, although scholarship on gender and war has generated many illuminating findings, it remains too present-centric. The same applies to much recent research on ethnic and racial divisions. For example, Enloe, Goldstein and Viterna offer convincing in-depth analyses of patriarchal structures that reinforce gender-centric divisions, but they do not analyse the historical origins of the relationship between war and patriarchy. To fully understand the gender dynamics of war it is crucial to zoom in on the origins of social stratification. The same principle applies to ethnic, racial and religious cleavages. In all these cases, organised violence has historically proved to be the central catalyst of social change. That is, the existing patterns of social stratification can be traced back to the first protracted wars [Halperin Reference Halperin2004; Malešević Reference Malešević2010a; Mann Reference Mann1993, Reference Mann2023]. Historically, institutionalised social hierarchies have developed because of war: the warrior caste gradually established dominance through their monopoly of violence. As Halperin [Reference Halperin2004] and Mann [Reference Mann1993] show, the legacies of previous wars created an environment in which the aristocratic warrior class maintained their dominance in Europe until the early twentieth century. It was only in the aftermath of the First World War and the mass participation of the ordinary population in the war effort that the European landed aristocracy was forced to relinquish their majority ownership of land in many European countries [Halperin Reference Halperin2004]. Recent studies on social stratification and war indicate that this link between organised violence and social inequalities has not been broken. Walter Scheidel [Reference Scheidel2018] has well documented the fact that, historically, warfare has been one of the key drivers of social stratification. More specifically, he argues that social inequalities have been significantly reduced only during periods of unprecedented upheaval, including mass-mobilisation warfare, large-scale revolutions, state collapse or deadly pandemics. In other words, wars have proved to be “great levellers” of social inequality, while during peace time income inequalities tend to rise sharply.

Second, some scholarship on social cleavages overemphasises the reproduction of social norms and ignores the wider geopolitical contexts that shape the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. For example, Goldstein’s [Reference Goldstein2001: 331] cultural determinism is built on the premise that patriarchal norms and “cultures need to coax and trick soldiers into participating in combat” and that social cleavages are solely the product of “cultural conditioning.” However, such functionalist arguments reify cultures and cannot explain the enormous variability of human behaviour during war. Despite experiencing similar patterns of patriarchal socialisation, soldiers tend to act differently on and off the battlefield [Malešević Reference Malešević2010a: 286–288]. More importantly, some mezzo perspectives cannot account for the different historical trajectories in the patterns of gender, ethnic or religious stratification. For this purpose, it is necessary to focus on geopolitical transformations and particularly the unintended consequences of warfare for the development of more inclusive social orders. Comparative historical sociologists noted long ago that the more militarised states, such as the nineteenth century Prussia and the post-civil war USA, were pioneers in welfare provision. To maintain a regular pattern of military draft, to curtail political liberalisation and to reduce emigration to the Americas the Prussian government instituted pensions for soldiers and their widows. Similarly, the US government provided old age pensions to Union veterans [Lachmann Reference Lachman, Hall and Malešević2013; Skocpol Reference Skocpol1992]. As Theda Skocpol [Reference Skocpol1992] shows, after the US Civil War one-third of all federal spending was allocated to the pensions of war veterans and their widows.

Nevertheless, the expansion of a full-fledged welfare state in Europe was the direct consequence of the two total wars. Comparative analysis of the impact of the Second World War on welfare in much of Western Europe indicates that war was a catalyst of deep social change: post-war European governments introduced better systems of social protection, reduced poverty and decreased economic inequalities. The post-war period also witnessed growth in social spending, and the introduction of fairer taxation systems [Obinger et al. Reference Obinger, Petersen and Starke2018]. As Lachmann [Reference Lachman, Hall and Malešević2013] demonstrates, this pattern of welfare was significantly reversed from the late 1970s as many governments embraced economic neoliberalism, abolished conscription, cut taxation and reduced social protection. This wider geopolitical and historical context helps us to situate and understand the long-term transformations of the main social cleavages.

Scholarship on social divisions is highly relevant to understanding the return of war in Europe. The protracted violent in Ukraine conflict has resulted in highly gendered experiences of violence: while many men have been sent to the frontlines, huge numbers of women have been internally or externally displaced and have been made dependent on humanitarian assistance. Recent studies indicate that 6.7 million women are in need of humanitarian support, almost 2 million are internally displaced and 90% of the 7 million Ukrainian war refugees abroad are women and children [UN Women 2025]. The war environment has also had a substantial impact on gender-based violence, which has risen 36% since 2022. At the same time, women have lost the opportunity to work: in 2023, 72.5% of the unemployed were women. In addition, women’s salaries have decreased substantially—they now earn 41.4% less than men. The pay gap has doubled since 2021 [UN Women 2025] These developments are in line with the argument of sociologists of war and gender that an environment of protracted organised violence reinforces patriarchal social relations.

A similar pattern of intensified social cleavages is discernible in terms of class and ethnic/racial divisions. The burden of participation in war is substantially skewed towards people from lower socio-economic groups and ethnic minorities. Ethnic and religious minorities are highly overrepresented in war casualties, with Buryats and Chukchis suffering thousands of fatalities even though they constitute only 0.3% and 0.01%, respectively, of the Russian population.Footnote ⁵ Russian military forces have relied continuously on volunteers from the poorer regions of the country and the impoverished population, and has also recruited prisoners to fight in the war [Zvonovskiy Reference Zvonovskiy2024]. The Ukrainian armed forces have also been disproportionally staffed by soldiers from lower socio-economic strata. But despite these pronounced inequalities in the early period of war social cohesion in Ukraine has increased substantially, with high levels of institutional trust, civic identity and mass-scale volunteering [Deineko 2023; Frizell et al. Reference Frizell, Muliavka, Obinger and Schmitt2025].

While mezzo-level approaches are highly useful in analysing the immediate impact of warfare on social cleavages, this is less the case when looking at the long-term patterns of war and social order. These approaches are highly valuable in tracing patterns of stratification during war, but they cannot explain why and when wars emerge. It is therefore important to develop more historically and geopolitically informed perspectives that could yield better theoretical models for understanding the return of war in Europe.

The Return of War and Comparative Historical Sociology

No single analytical perspective can explain the return of war in Europe. However, some sociological approaches have more explanatory power than others. Comparative historical sociology is perhaps best suited to offer wide-ranging interpretations of the relationship between war and social change. This perspective centres on identifying the key social mechanisms that shape the war-state-society nexus over the longue durée, and in this context it can account for the reappearance of warfare in Europe. Comparative historical sociology aims to explain how wars and preparations for warfare have shaped the character of social order over the course of human history.

In this context, Michael Mann [Reference Mann1993, Reference Mann2005, Reference Mann2023] has developed a general sociological theory of organised violence. He explores the rationality and universality of inter-state wars across time and space. Mann argues that wars are not universal in the sense of being the outcome of, intrinsic urges deriving from human biology. Instead, they became widespread only after human beings became more sedentary and the first states came into being. The prevalence of warfare in history is linked directly to the development of social stratification and the coercive apparatus of the state. Mann also finds most inter-state wars to be “irrational” with regard to their means, ends and outcomes. For example, even for groups that directly benefit from wars such as political leaders, military commanders or private corporations such benefits are temporary and usually evaporate in the medium and long term. Mann also challenges dominant realist accounts of war, arguing that the principal causes of war are to be found in the changing dynamics of interdependent power networks: the economy, politics, the military and ideology. In contrast to political scientists who see democratic political orders ae less war prone than autocracies Mann seeks to show that the type of political regime does not have a significant influence on warfare’s frequency, scale and intensity.

Hans Joas [Reference Joas2003] analyses the contradictory relationship between modernity and organised violence. Although Enlightenment thinkers envisaged modernity in terms of economic prosperity, social equality, freedom and peace, the contemporary world continues to be marred by wars, violent uprisings, genocides, revolutions and terrorism. Drawing on George Herbert Mead and pragmatist sociology Joas challenges functionalist theories of social order and offers an approach centred on the creativity of social action, of which organised violence remains an indispensable part [Joas Reference Joas2003; Joas and Knöbl Reference Joas and Knöbl2013].

While classic sociologists such as Gumplowitz and Rustow noticed that wars have fostered state formation they paid less attention to the historical variability of this process. More recently, comparative historical sociologists have analysed how different wars have fostered the development of different polities. Thus Andreas Wimmer [Reference Wimmer2018, Reference Wimmer2012] and his collaborators [Feinstein and Wimmer Reference Feinstein and Wimmer2023; Wimmer and Min Reference Wimmer and Min2009] have generated large-scale data sets, including 464 wars waged since 1816 in over 150 states. Using these datasets, they have analysed how warfare has shaped the character of statehood. Their key finding is that periods of war surge tend to be linked with changing principles of state legitimation: “this shift from empire, dynasticism and theocracy to national principles of legitimising political power is a major source of war in the modern era… Nationalism thus motivated a bloody, generation long struggle over who should rule over whom. It lasted until the like over like principle was realised through border changes, expulsions and ethnic cleansings, assimilation and nation-building or political accommodation or power sharing between various ethnic elites” [Wimmer Reference Wimmer2012: 4]. This approach expands on Tilly’s theory of war and state making by specifying the conditions under which warfare can build states. As Feinstein and Wimmer [Reference Feinstein and Wimmer2023] show, the successful shift from patrimonial kingdoms, city-states and empires to effective nation-states depends on the establishment of vibrant political institutions that enable the expression of popular consent, freedom to bargain, a willingness to pay taxes regularly and fight in wars, as well as the ability of rulers to secure their legitimacy to rule. In this perspective, both the state and civil society play a crucial role in the transformation of empire to nation-state and in containing wars. Wimmer offers a politically centred explanation of social change in which the emphasis is not on economic inequalities or cultural domination but on the political exclusion of minority groups. He argues that although successful wars shape the form of the state, they do not determine its long-term stability. What matters in the long term is the development of robust civil society organisations, the ability of the state to provide public goods to all its citizens evenly and the development of shared media of communication across society [Wimmer Reference Wimmer2018].

Other scholars have also zoomed in on the historical relationships between wars, empires and nation-states but have reached different conclusions. John A. Hall [Reference Hall2024] and Krishan Kumar [Reference Kumar2021, Reference Kumar2017] have questioned the conventional historiographic accounts that see empires as being gradually and inevitably replaced by nation-states in the modern era. They aim to show rather that empires have continued to co-exist with nation-states in the contemporary world. Hall [Reference Hall2024: 2] argues that “the two world wars were imperial wars, rather than wars between nation states. Even after the rapid decolonisation in the 1950s and 1960s, empires persisted in the USA and the USSR, though both denied that they had that status… empires are not finished: Russia and China have joined the USA in showing imperial dispositions, and even the European Union thinks of itself occasionally in these terms—while both India and Turkey now exhibit imperial features, both internally and externally.” The imperial features of these polities are reflected particularly in their unilateral decisions to participate in different wars or to initiate military interventions without UN resolutions. Kumar [Reference Kumar2010: 119] reinforces this view: “empires and nation states may in fact best be thought of as alternative political projects, both of which are available for elites to pursue depending on the circumstances of the moment.” In this context, nationalism and imperialism are not necessarily mutually exclusive ideological doctrines. Instead, the historical record shows instances in which they intersect as imperial nationalism. Imperial wars such as the First World War clearly demonstrate the power of such an ideology, when 2.5 million colonial subjects from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa mostly volunteered to fight and die for the British empire [Kumar Reference Kumar2017: 359]. These general sociological approaches aim to identify the key social processes that have shaped the relationships between warfare and social order. Their aim is to understand how organised violence impacts social change across time and space. As such, these approaches are highly relevant for understanding long-term dynamics, including the return of major warfare in Europe. By emphasising the changing and contingent features of geopolitical change these perspectives can account for many different aspects of the ongoing war in Europe.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has undermined the teleological and Eurocentric models of social change in which twenty-first century Europe is often depicted as the continent that has eradicated warfare [Mueller Reference Mueller2009]. The general arguments about the long-term relationship between war and social change advanced by Joas and Mann seem highly plausible in the context of this ongoing violent conflict. While much conventional sociological analysis has downplayed the role of military power in modernity, Joas and Mann demonstrate convincingly that warfare is also integral to the project of modernity. The heritage of the Enlightenment cannot be reduced to economic progress, political advancements or achieving a wider ideological consensus. Coercive power remains the backbone of social change, too. Despite the dominance of international norms that prohibit changing international borders by force, and irrespective of the economic irrationality of military conquest, the Russian government has opted to invade an independent and sovereign neighbouring state. It has sought to justify this invasion by invoking the modernist and Enlightenment-inspired rhetoric of restoring justice and bringing peace and equality. In Putin’s own words: “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who for eight years now have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime… to this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation”Footnote ⁶.

The Russia invasion has also disrupted the well established view that nation-states have replaced empires for good. This war of territorial conquest directly challenges the idea that national borders are inviolable and has also revealed how fragile the European geopolitical order is. The invasion has also galvanised different political actors who advocate imperial or semi-imperial projects and territorial conquests in other parts of the world (including China, Israel and Turkey, as well as the USA). These developments seem inexplicable in terms of conventional, present-centric sociological approaches. However, comparative historical sociologists, such as Kumar and Hall, have devised potent conceptual apparatuses that can account for such geopolitical transformations. As they—correctly—show, empires and nation-states are not necessarily mutually exclusive political projects. Instead, they both remain part of the elite political repertoire in the contemporary world. In this context, large polities such as Russia, the USA and China are nation-states with imperial prerogatives that can be unleashed in times of crisis [Malešević Reference Malešević2019].

Furthermore, this war has also had a profound impact on state and nation formation in Ukraine and Russia. In line with the arguments put forward by comparative historical sociologists such as Mann, Tilly and Wimmer the protracted warfare has fostered the transformation of the administrative apparatuses of the state, reshaped economic capacities and galvanised the mass mobilisation of society. Despite the enormous destruction of infrastructure, wartime Ukraine has managed to build a smaller but more robust civil service. For example, the number of civil servants has decreased from 208,000 in early 2022 to 161,575 in 2023. The war environment fostered a swift transition to “emergency mode by relocating, adopting more agile working practices, and expediting decision making” [Ogryzko Reference Ogryzko2024]. The country also had to undertake a speedy transition to a wartime economy that is now much more centred on military production. While in 2014 Ukraine’s military procurement budget was only $62 million, by 2023 it had increased to a staggering $30.8 billion. Since the start of war, more than 50% of government expenditures have gone to the military. There are more than 500 arms producers in the country, employing over 300,000 people [Kuzmuk and Scarazzato Reference Kuzmuk and Lorenzo2025]. In line with the arguments of historical sociologists, the war has intensified state development.

The same processes have been taking place at the level of society, where warfare has had a deep impact on nation-formation. While before the war Ukraine’s national identity was ambiguous, undefined and highly polarised, recent surveys point towards substantially increased national unity. Whereas in 2000 72.7% of respondents considered themselves to be Ukrainian and 20% Russian, by 2024 this had changed: 94.7% considered themselves to be Ukrainian and only 1.9 % Russian. While in 2015, 68% of respondents declared that they were very proud or fairly proud of being Ukrainian, in 2024, 91% of citizens expressed this attitude [Razumkov 2024]. Many surveys conducted during the war indicate that the majority of the population express a strong sense of attachment to the country and that “this sense of unity is crosscutting for all segments of the population and across most oblasts, highlighting a strong presence of shared identity in Ukraine” [Biloskurskiy and Zurabashvili Reference Biloskurskiy and Zurabashvili2024: 8]. The war environment has also generated greater social cohesion. The sense of civic duty, community cooperation and national solidarity are all at a very high level: in 2024, 83% of respondents stated that they can rely on others for help [Biloskurskiy and Zurabashvili Reference Biloskurskiy and Zurabashvili2024: 16]. These findings are fully in line with the arguments developed by comparative historical sociologists of war, such as Wimmer, Hall and Mann.

Nevertheless, what is missing in these longue durée accounts is the micro-sociological context of violence. While comparative historical sociologists provide illuminating analytical frameworks that can effectively explain long-term changes in the state, war and society nexus, they offer much less when it comes to understanding the micro-world of warfare. Although these macro-historical tools of analysis are indispensable for tracing the long-term trajectories of war and social order it is just as important to explain the interactional micro-dynamics of organised violence.

The Micro-Sociology of War Experience

The sociologists of war have only recently started systematic exploration of organised violence on the micro-level. US military sociologists such as Janowitz and Shills [Reference Janowitz and Shills1948], Marshall [Reference Marshall1947] and Stouffer et al. [Reference Stouffer1949] were the pioneers of micro-sociological research in theatres of war. They were able to collect highly valuable information on the motivation of US and Wehrmacht soldiers during the Second World War. The Korean and Vietnam wars also generated indispensable findings on the behaviour of combatants on the battlefield [Modell and Haggerty Reference Modell and Haggerty1991; Moskos Reference Moskos1975]. However, these early studies lacked theoretical nuance and were more focused on the effectiveness of the US military during the war. It is only in the past two decades that sociologists have begun to generate sophisticated, micro-sociological theories that analyse different aspects of war experience. The most influential areas of such research have been the social experience of combat motivation, and the role emotions and rationality play on the frontline.

Randall Collins [Reference Collins2022, 2008] has initiated a new paradigm in the micro-sociology of violence. In contrast to conventional interpretations that see violent action as easy, automatic and natural, Collins demonstrates that for most people violence is very difficult. Building on Goffman and Durkheim, he emphasises that most human beings lack competence when it comes to committing violence and that violent action often goes against established “interaction ritual chains.” “Successful” violence, however, entails a degree of emotional and bodily synchronisation that may enhance the social mechanisms through which groups forge symbols of collective membership and attain emotional energies. Unlike conventional military approaches that focus on size of armies and quality of weaponry as key determinants of war victories, Collins [Reference Collins2022, 2008] identifies the centrality of emotional energy and micro-organisational power. In this understanding, it is the organisational breaking down of the enemy’s military that becomes central for war victories: “if it were not socially well organised, wide participation fighting would not be possible” [Collins Reference Collins2008: 11]. Furthermore, group dynamics are just as crucial. If military organisations cannot generate “emotional energy” to fuel potent “interaction ritual chains” group solidarity is likely to deflate or even evaporate, and without emotional group domination, there will be no military victory: “most physical casualties and material damage are inflicted on the side that has lost emotional energy to continue the confrontation” [Collins Reference Collins2022: 195]. Hence, wars are possible only when states and militaries are successful in corralling individuals into micro-organised action.

Drawing on Collins’ theory, a number of sociologists have explored the micro-dynamics of war and peace in different social contexts. For example, Isabel Bramsen [Reference Bramsen2023] analyses the micro-processes that shape everyday experiences of resistance, fighting and dialogue. She zooms in on the micro contexts of everyday encounters and the capacity of peace negotiators to fall “into each other’s bodily rhythms and scripts of reciprocal interaction for micro-sociality” [Bramsen Reference Bramsen2023: 1]. Similarly, Anthony King [Reference King2013] has explored professional soldiers’ motivation for fighting. Drawing on Collins and Durkheim, King finds shared collective action as the principal driver of fighting motivation. He rejects psychological explanations that emphasise individual motives and “inter-personal attraction” as the sources of social cohesion on the battlefield. Instead, he argues that cohesion is a direct consequence of collective performance: “Cohesion refers to the ability of the soldiers in an infantry platoon to act together and to achieve their mission in the face of the enemy; cohesion is demonstrated when soldiers are able to shoot, move, and seek cover together or in mutually supportive ways… cohesion refers to collective combat performance itself” [King Reference King2013: 36].

Other micro-social analysts of war, such as Kevin McSorley [Reference McSorley2014] and Jane Tynan [Reference Tynan and McSorley2013], have focused on the human corporal experience of warfare. They both analyse how individual bodies become reshaped through the interaction with violence, from “fashioning civilian bodies for war” to the “thinking and feeling bodies” that may be used, mutilated and destroyed in wars. They focus on the embodied character of war experience and point to different affective, sensory and physical features of social life on the frontline.

Different aspects of battlefield experience have also received more attention lately. Some scholars, such as Halden [Reference Halden2020, Reference Halden2018] and Käihkö [Reference Käihkö2018], have questioned Eurocentric interpretations of war experience. They argue that much of the existing scholarship is preoccupied with twentieth and early twenty-first century Western military organisations and has much less to say about “armed groups that are non-Western, non-state, and non-modern” [Käihkö Reference Käihkö2018: 571]. The comparative historical sociology of war indicates that contemporary Western military experience is just one of many across time and space. By zooming in on the micro-social dynamics of medieval warrior bands and different paramilitary formations all over the globe Halden [Reference Halden2020, Reference Halden2018] shows how variable, contextual, and culturally diverse is the battlefield experience of different combatant organisations.

Another significant topic that has received a great deal of attention in recent micro-sociological scholarship is the relationship between rationality, emotions and warfare. Recent studies have challenged the view of war as being driven by irrationality. Stathis Kalyvas [Reference Kalyvas2006] and Fearon and Laitin [Reference Fearon and Laitin2003] argue that violence deployed in war environments often follows a specific situational logic, in which individuals make the most rational choices in the given conditions. In this rationalist paradigm, the use of violence is understood as the optimal tactic to maximise one’s benefits. In this context, coordinated collective action is often the sum of shared self-interested behaviours. In contrast to traditional accounts that invoke formal chain of command or the irrationality of decision-making Kalyvas [Reference Kalyvas2006] shows that civil wars usually operate according to very logical and rational principles. He shows how different agents use the context of war to pursue their self-interest: while the political and military establishment deploy violence selectively and strategically to impose control on the adversary, the ordinary population often map their private grievances onto the ideological narratives that frame these civil wars. Hence, it is not so much that wars infuse all social life with adverse political narratives but rather that political life becomes highly privatised. For example, as he shows in his in-depth analysis of the Greek civil war (1946–1949) the macro-ideological conflict between communists and anti-communists was often experienced at the micro level as primarily self-interested as disgruntled neighbours settled personal scores.

This rationalist shift has been useful in bringing out the complexity of human motivations in theatres of war, whereas utilitarian theories have proved inadequate for explaining the non-instrumental aspects of human action. More recently, sociologists of war have focused their attention on the role of affect, emotions and habitual behaviour on the frontline. Influenced by the work of Sara Ahmed [Reference Ahmed2004] several sociologists have explored how emotions operate in terms of changing cultural practices rather than inherent psychological states. For Ahmed [Reference Ahmed2004: 1], emotions are less biological givens and more cultural constructs that shape the “surfaces” of individual and collective bodies. Feelings of fear, shame or anger are not automatic bodily reflexes but involve shared social norms and cultural memories that generate and frame our emotional responses. Working within this paradigm Linda Åhäll and Thomas Gregory [Reference Åhäll, Gregory, Åhäll and Gregory2015] and Holmqvist [Reference Holmqvist2013] have analysed how emotions mark boundaries between different social groups in times of war. They define who should be feared, who should be loved, and whose deaths will be grieved. Gregory [Reference Gregory2019: 131] has also explored how US soldiers in Iraq not only made rational decisions on who to shoot but also “affectual judgments” on who to kill. Such affectual judgements were in part conditioned through military training and involved emotional reactions that “mark certain bodies as dangerous before they even have a chance to act.” Jeffrey Hass [Reference Hass2021] has also identified the central role emotions played in the Second World War siege of Leningrad. He zooms in on how the extreme war conditions shaped the social dynamics of empathy and compassion, but also of opportunism and egotistical behaviour.

The micro-sociology of the war environment provides a window into the everyday lives of ordinary individuals. This type of analysis can successfully capture changing interactions, emotional dynamics and micro-group behaviour on the battlefield, in the rear, in the civilian sphere and in society at large. With the development and everyday accessibility of new digital technologies, the micro-interactional environment of war has become much more recorded and documented than ever before. Both soldiers and civilians now tend to document their everyday experiences and often broadcast them on social media platforms to the rest of the world. Hence, there is an abundance of new information and data that the micro-sociologist of war can harness and analyse. The war in Ukraine has generated unprecedented digital access to many external observers and there is now a wealth of raw information on different everyday realities of this violent conflict. Micro-sociologists of war can now analyse this data using the sophisticated analytical frameworks developed in the past two decades.

For example, the micro-dynamics of mass atrocities in the Ukraine war, such as the massacres of civilians in Bucha and Izium, can be successfully analysed using Collins’s [Reference Collins2008] concept of “forward panic.” This is a phenomenon characterised by asymmetrical and excessive use of violence by the emotionally dominant war party. Forward panic in a war context is manifested through perpetrators’ sudden release of fear and tension built up in prior interactions between the two warring sides. By establishing emotional dominance, the perpetrators establish and maintain an interaction ritual chain. Hence, the mass killings at close range of 458 Ukrainian civilians by Russia’s 64th Motor Rifle Brigade in Bucha, which was documented by video footage and social media posts, constitute a form of forward panic [Korniychuk and Logonova Reference Korniychuk and Logonova2022].Footnote ⁷

The rationalist paradigm developed by Kalyvas and Fearon is also applicable to some aspects of micro-level violence in Ukraine. Various mass media reports indicate that in the Russian occupied areas of Ukraine some individuals have used the context of war to denounce their neighbours as “Ukrainian spies,” who spread “false information,” “discredit the Russian army” or support “extremism.”Footnote ⁸ In this way, they were able to settle their private animosities under the umbrella of “Russian patriotism” and profit from the new war realities. Another example of strategic and self-interested social action is the mass mobilisation of Russian convicted criminals who have been freed from prison on condition they fight in Ukraine. According to several sources, between 140,000 and 180,000 prisoners have been recruited into the Russian armed forces [Denisova Reference Denisova2025].

The micro-sociology of war can also help explain the role emotions and micro-group bonding have played in sustaining the war effort on both sides. This includes the changing dynamics of fear that permeates entire societies but also the sense of pride, love, compassion and solidarity that characterise the relationship between citizens and soldiers. As recent surveys indicate, the war has fostered a strong sense of national solidarity and social cohesion in Ukraine, which is often expressed through the language of shared emotional experience [Biloskurskiy and Zurabashvili Reference Biloskurskiy and Zurabashvili2024].

Recent scholarship in the micro-sociology of war has provided new and potent analytical tools for the study of war on the micro level. There are many micro-interactional contexts in war that can be successfully analysed and tackled used these potent conceptual frameworks. The micro-sociology of war is a new and developing research area. Its primary aim is to generate new knowledge on the inter-personal dynamics of violence that macro and mezzo perspectives on war lack. This research focus has already yielded valuable analyses of people’s instrumentalist motivations and emotional experiences in the war environment. The new scholarship has also demonstrated that micro-sociological analysis can add much to the existing psychological perspectives on combat behaviour, battlefield experience and the perceptions and actions of non-combatants. However, this research needs to be better integrated with the mezzo level analysis of social divisions and macro-historical studies on long-term patterns of warfare. Furthermore, the existing divide between instrumentalist accounts that privilege rationality and the affectual turn that emphasises the centrality of emotions should be bridged. As Heaney [2013] points out there are many empirical studies that show that reason and emotions are not mutually exclusive: they are deeply interrelated and both shape human behaviour.

The Sociology of Warfare: The Way Forward

Micro-sociology cannot explain the timing or sequencing of the specific historical dynamics of war and social order. Hence, to fully account for the return of war as a sociological reality it is crucial to integrate the micro-interactional, mezzo-stratificational and macro-historical frames of analysis. One of the ways forward for this is to further develop a multi-layered and process-centred theoretical framework that operates at all three levels of analysis. As I have already argued, such a framework needs to focus on the long-term dynamics of organised violence and its relationship with social order. More specifically, it entails exploring the coercive-organisational, ideological and micro-interactional processes that shape the war-state-society nexus [Malešević Reference Malešević2025, Reference Malešević2017, Reference Malešević2014, Reference Malešević2010a]. I argue that warfare has been one of the key catalysts of social transformation in history and identify three ongoing social processes that have shaped the relationship between war and societies: the cumulative bureaucratisation of coercion, centrifugal ideologisation and the envelopment of micro-level solidarities.

The first of these processes centres on the coercive character of organisational power. As nearly all large complex social organisations operate through a chain of command, hierarchies, division of labour and individual tasks and responsibilities they all possess substantive coercive capacities. Historically, this power has been mainly cumulative as large-scale organisations expand by increasing their coercive power. Although history is littered with failed, defeated and assimilated social organisations, organisational power as such has continued to expand. This is visible most clearly in the ability of nation-states to monopolise their legitimate use of violence over their entire territory, but non-state social organisations—including private corporations or religious institutions—continue to expand their coercive-organisational reach and capacity, too. The cumulative character of organisational power is also discernible in the isomorphic properties of many social organisations: successful models of coercive organisational power are imitated and replicated throughout the globe [Meyer 1997]. This longue durée view of organisational power can reveal how geopolitical shifts can shape different organisational conflicts, some of which lead to military escalation. It is precisely because modern polities have accumulated unprecedented coercive-organisational capacities that they can periodically unleash wars of conquest, as Russia has done in this century. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine has showed clearly how central coercive-organisational capacity is for military success. In this context, the size of the military is not as important as its organisational power. Since Biddle [Reference Biddle2010] it has become apparent that the dynamics of force deployment is more significant that sheer number of troops. Although Russian forces have a much more powerful army, more soldiers and better weapons than their Ukrainian counterparts their invasion has not been a military success. Instead, already in the first year of war they experienced a huge number of casualties and lost control of many territories they had initially occupied [Malešević Reference Malešević2023]. Thus, analysis of coercive organisational capacity is central for understanding the dynamics of all wars.

However, as coercion alone is rarely enough to maintain order it is often necessary to develop elaborate ideological narratives that help justify the hierarchical character of social order. Hence, the relationship between society and war usually entails the presence of centrifugal ideologisation. This is the capacity of social organisations to generate and systematically disseminate specific doctrinal creeds to successfully legitimise, but also mobilise wide support for, the use of violence. The focus here is less on the content of doctrinal narratives and more on the ongoing process of ideologisation that operates through different channels monopolised by social organisations—from public sphere, mass and social media to education systems or the entertainment sphere. This is a centrifugal process in the sense that it radiates from the organisational top and gradually penetrates much of the social order. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated convincingly how important ideology is for the legitimisation of conflict and mobilisation of public support. Wars often generate social cohesion and displace internal conflicts outside. This war has also shown how quickly ideologisation can transform the public sphere and delegitimise dissent. In the world of nation-states, nationalism is the most significant mechanism for social mobilisation and political legitimisation. Hence, both Ukraine and Russia invoke nation-centric discourses to justify their military action. Nevertheless, as many surveys reported above indicate, Ukrainian society has been characterised by relatively high levels of social cohesion, which is less present in Russia. Ukrainian defensive nationalism seems to have outstripped Russian offensive nationalism as a potent social glue that sustains the society-wide commitment to resist the invasion. An in-depth analysis of centrifugal ideologisation in Ukraine and Russia would help us understand precisely how nationalist narratives mobilise public support.

These two large-scale structural processes can operate only when successfully couched in the language and practices of everyday life. Hence, the effective use of organised violence entails the envelopment of micro-level group solidarities. The power of social organisations depends on their ability to envelop the world of personalised interactions. They often emulate the discourses and actions of face-to-face networks to harness the intense emotional commitments and strong moral precepts of the deep micro-solidarities generated in local contexts. That is why most people join or support violent social organisations not as individuals but as members of small close-knit groups [della Porta Reference della Porta2013; Sageman Reference Sageman2011]. Such micro-groups are often built around deep comradeships, close kinship networks or lasting friendships. The war in Ukraine has been a prime example of a conflict in which micro-solidarities of soldiers and their friends and family members have been continuously reframed as national solidarities. The shared experience of Ukrainian soldiers who are constantly exposed to life or death situations has generated strong and lasting emotional ties between “brothers in arms” [Malešević Reference Malešević2023]. The experience of other wars, such as the 1990s Yugoslav wars or the ongoing Gaza occupation, indicate that military victories are often determined by the ability to successfully coordinate networks of micro-level solidarities with wider coercive-organisational and ideological structures [Malešević Reference Malešević2022; Malešević and David Reference Malešević and Lea2025]. For example, the Croatian army, despite having much smaller and poorly equipped armed forces in 1991, was able by the end of the war in 1995 to prevail and re-take all of the territories occupied by the Yugoslav/Serb armed forces. This military victory was determined in large part by the ability of the Croatian military to tap into the micro-world of solidarity networks and link them fully with complex organisational capacities and ideological narratives. At the same time, its Serbian military adversary experienced organisational collapse and ideological deflation, despite having substantially larger military forces [Malešević Reference Malešević2022: 233–250]. Hence, understanding the dynamics of micro-level solidarities is central for any sociological analysis.

The historical interdependence of these three processes can help us better understand how wars shape social relations, and vice versa. For example, the human experience of killing in times of war is often interpreted through neo-Darwinian or interactionist views. While the former insist that killing is an optimal tactic of genetic survival and as such is relatively easy, the latter approach focuses on the universal tension and fear that inhibit killings on the battlefield. However, neither of these two perspectives can adequately explain the sheer variety of human battlefield behaviour. By zooming in on the changing dynamics of cumulative bureaucratisation of coercion, centrifugal ideologisation, and the envelopment of micro-level solidarities one can explain this social variability in human-on-human killing [Malešević Reference Malešević2022, Reference Malešević2020]. The experience of killing on the battlefield is not an automatic, biologically ingrained, and emotionally uniform response. Instead, this phenomenon is shaped by organisational, ideological and micro-interactional dynamics that forge different emotional responses.

Because wars are unpredictable and contingent social phenomena, no universal analytical tools can be devised to predict when a particular war will erupt. However, some sociological perspectives seem to offer more than others in terms of explanatory potential as they can trace the long-term trajectories of the relationship between war and society. As I have tried to show in this article, the integration of longue durée macro-sociological analysis with micro-sociological scholarship on war experience offers the best way forward in our efforts to understand how wars shape social order, and vice versa. It is not by chance that such a perspective is also better suited to explain the recent return of inter-state warfare in Europe.