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two - Theorising ‘War’ within Sociology and Criminology
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- Bristol University Press
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- 03 July 2019, pp 15-40
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Summary
Introduction
It has been suggested that ‘war’ has been of lesser interest to the discipline of sociology than other normative social phenomenon. West and Matthewman (2016) have recently pointed out, rather than commanding the central attention of sociological analysis, the study of war and the military have either been broadly ignored within the discipline, discussed as an attendant matter related to social and political issues, or subsumed as a facet of peace studies. Indeed, they and other scholars (Barkawi, 2006; Ware, 2009; Eulriet, 2010) have noted that the academic study of war has conventionally been taken to be the preserve of the macro interests of international relations, ‘tended to be understood in rationalist ways, as a mechanism in which sovereign states and elites engage as a means to pursue their interests, paying little attention to the dynamics and power of civil society’ (West and Matthewman, 2016: 486).
Furthermore, the study of the military as a social entity has been seen as the territory of the niche, but longstanding, interest of military sociology (West and Matthewman, 2016); a subdiscipline of sociology emerging from US scholarship in the aftermath of the Second World War (see for example Coates and Pelligrin, 1965; Siebold, 2001; Caforio, 2006; Soeters, 2018). For West and Matthewman (2016), making a case for theorising and studying war as a ‘strong program’, requires surpassing such rationalist agendas set by international relations and military sociology, in order to better explore the interconnections between state conduct of/at war, and the impacts militarisation has on social relations. However, overlooked within the ‘strong’ agenda put forth by West and Matthewman (2016) has been the more marginal commentary from criminology.
Although such disciplinary boundaries are often artificial and entirely co-constructed by the knowledges, methods and practices that are – or are not – recognised within and by them, when studying the subject of war from a ‘criminologically’ oriented starting point (as we have in this book) such boundaries can and do become noticeable. They are therefore worth acknowledging in the interests of breaking them down in order to appreciate the subject of war as a social phenomenon with interdisciplinary relevance across the social sciences.
Contents
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- 03 July 2019, pp iii-iii
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Index
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- 03 July 2019, pp 195-203
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eight - Conclusion: Beyond a ‘New’ Wars Paradigm: Bringing the Periphery into View
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- Bristol University Press
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- 30 April 2022
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- 03 July 2019, pp 147-166
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Summary
Introduction
In this book we have endeavoured to connect extant sociological and criminological literature to the contested subject of ‘war’. By foregrounding what for some might be regarded as ‘subjugated knowledge’ (Foucault, 2004), we have attempted to demonstrate in preliminary ways how criminological literature addressing war might be revisited and developed from additional sociological insights. In Chapters Two to Seven we demonstrated that there have been some meaningful criminological contributions on ‘old’ and ‘new’ wars (Kaldor, 2014), including the First and Second World Wars and the Holocaust, the Cold War era, further genocides throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the Balkans wars, the conflict in Northern Ireland and most recently wars perpetrated under the lexicon of the ‘war on terrorism’ post-9/11. What we hope to have made clear is that the study of war is not new to criminology (or sociology). We also hope to have illuminated some of the ‘negative evidence’ (Lewis and Lewis, 1980) inherent in the literature we have presented. In so doing it becomes apparent that not all wars, armed conflicts and genocides have caught the attention of the discipline. For example, the Falklands War stands out for its near complete absence. Moreover, with few notable exceptions, other wars and conflicts – including the 1991 Gulf War (see White, R., 2008) and Israel's ‘colonial-territorial project’ of occupied East Jerusalem in the West Bank of historic Palestine against Palestinian land (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2017: 1280) – have been significantly underrepresented within criminological scholarship on war. Furthermore, with the exception of recent substantive work documenting genocidal violence across some African nations, and parts of South and Southeast Asia (noted in Chapter Four), so the (in) visibility of war and conflict occurring in other parts of the Global South (and North for that matter) become noticeable by their lack of coverage in much of the conventional literature. By implication these absences are suggestive of both the normative disciplinary interests of (mainstream) criminology and the orientation of its metropolitan knowledge base, a point to which we shall return.
In this extended conclusion we wish to underscore that there is more work to do to ensure criminological scholarship has something relevant and critical to contribute to the interdisciplinary study of war.
seven - Criminology’s ‘Fourth War’? Gendering War and Its Violence(s)
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- 03 July 2019, pp 127-146
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Summary
Introduction
So far this book has been preoccupied with the fixations of extant criminological studies of war and their relative strengths and weaknesses in making sense of war and its consequences. In this penultimate chapter, we take a noticeably different view of how war has been generally studied within criminology (and sociology). By drawing out some key themes relating to the violence(s) of war more broadly understood throughout the literature covered so far, in this chapter we foreground two perspectives that have been understated up to this point: on the one hand, victimology (aspects of which have been discussed elsewhere in this book), and on the other hand, feminism. In so doing, and following Barberet (2014), this chapter focuses attention on interconnections between war-time, peace-time and post-conflict contexts in the experience of war and its violence(s). The substantive topics of concern in exploring such interconnections are twofold: the repositioning of war as a gendered activity predicated on hegemonic forms of masculinity and masculine posturing; and the nature and extent of sexual violence(s) and their varying expression across the domains of war, peace and post-conflict when understood as gendered crimes. These, we believe, offer a corrective to how the normalcy of war violence has been assumed and understood so far in our discussions in this book. However, in the interests of providing a coherent and focussed illustration of this reconceptualisation of war our example in this chapter draws primarily from the nature and impact of genocide.
As will become evident, drawing clear boundaries between some aspects of the issues addressed here is highly contentious and they are drawn as a heuristic device only. This is to help illustrate how war violence is normatively considered in criminological and sociological literature more generally, and as a means by which to be critically reflective on what has been presented throughout the previous chapters. Moreover, as earlier chapters have been concerned to demonstrate, it is the case that there have always been criminologists and, for the purposes of this chapter, victimologists and feminists, concerned with the practices and consequences of war. To begin our discussion, we first return to reconsider genocidal violence (discussed in Chapter Four), this time from the view of victimology.
Preface
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- 03 July 2019, pp viii-x
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Summary
The study of war has a long tradition within the social sciences including the discipline of criminology. Yet despite historical evidence of war being influential within the lives, activities and the respective work of sociologists and criminologists, and the consistent emergence and cessation of wars, conflicts and genocides being the social and political tapestry against which these disciplines have developed (as variously addressed throughout this book), the study of war and its attendant subject matter have often been perceived as marginal, neglected or irrelevant to criminology (and sociology for that matter). While there may be some truth to observations of this kind, within this book we look to unsettle such ideas by making clear the connection of war with the study of criminology. At the outset of this book readers should be minded to consider (at least) two questions: is the study of war within criminology new? What is the relevance of writing this book? Let us offer some brief answers.
First, is the study of war new to criminology? As will become evident, the answer to the first question is quite simply no: the study of war within criminology is not at all a novel undertaking. Recent examples of the prestigious Radzinowicz Prize, annually awarded to the best academic article in the British Journal of Criminology, have addressed the illegal activities associated with the 2003 war in Iraq (Whyte, 2007), reconciliation processes in Afghanistan (Braithwaite and Wardak, 2013; Wardak and Braithwaite, 2013), and the Israeli occupation of Palestine (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2017). Each of the scholars receiving these awards had, of course, been thinking and writing about war for some time prior to this recognition. Interestingly, none of these scholars made reference to the seminal work of Ruth Jamieson (1998) who had long before outlined an agenda for war to be studied as an interdisciplinary endeavour within criminology. One scholar who had previously made acknowledgement of this work was Jock Young, cross-referencing it within The Exclusive Society (1999), The Vertigo of Late Modernity (2007) and The Criminological Imagination (2011). In this latter (final) contribution, Young (2011: 217) concluded by squarely situating Jamieson's (1998) ‘pioneering work on the criminology of war’ as part of the broader intellectual tradition of critical criminology.
six - The ‘Dialectics of War’ in Criminology
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- 03 July 2019, pp 105-126
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Summary
Introduction
In the Introduction it was noted that the work of Clausewitz ([1832]1997) depicted war in rationalist terms as a violent entitlement of the state, to be used without limit against an ‘enemy’ for political ends. However, in what has followed Kaldor's (2014) interpretation of this as an old mode of warfare has been reinterpreted to illustrate that throughout the 20th and 21st centuries war can be understood as a dynamic social phenomenon which has changed into new forms. Importantly, from the Second World War onwards, these ‘new’ wars disproportionately targeted non-combatant civilian populations during the ‘war on terrorism’ (Chapter Three), via atrocity and genocide (Chapter Four), during the production, use and proliferation of nuclear weapons (Chapter Five); and, as we will come to learn (in Chapter Seven) through the perpetration of sexual and gender-based violence. In this chapter, we shall problematise further the disproportionate targeting of civilians by concentrating on their continued victimisation through aerial terror bombing. As Ruggiero (2015: 33) points out:
Estimates suggest that, throughout the nineteenth century, apart from the American civil war, 90 per cent of losses were among fighting troops. In World War I (WWI) deaths of civilians still accounted for 10–15 per cent, becoming around 40 per cent in World War II (WWII).
Contemporarily, civilians are now estimated to total some ninety per cent of all war deaths (Ruggiero, 2015). Indeed, as Steinert (2003: 276) further suggests, the asymmetry of this victimisation meant that ‘from the Second World War on, it became safer to be a soldier than a civilian’ during war. By exposing this dilemma to sociological analysis, here we argue that the social phenomenon of war comes to form multiple dialogues within civic and intellectual life. Drawing on further work of Martin Shaw (1988a), we outline two interconnected ‘dialectics of war’ within criminology: first between civilian war victims and the ‘deviant’ soldier; second between what we have termed the politics of remembering and ‘forgetting’ war violence. The purposes of examining these two interconnected dialectics are to illustrate that the ‘risk-transfer’ wars of the 20th and 21st centuries (Shaw, 2005) have come strategically to prioritise the lives of soldiers over the deaths of civilians, and that war making is a relational process.
Acknowledgements
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- 03 July 2019, pp iv-v
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A Criminology of War?
- Ross McGarry, Sandra Walklate
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- Bristol University Press
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In this book, the authors seek to question if a 'criminology of war' is possible, whilst providing an implicit critique of mainstream criminology. They also examine how this seemingly 'new horizon' of the discipline might be usefully informed by sociology.
four - The ‘Forgotten Criminology of Genocide’?
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- 03 July 2019, pp 61-82
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Summary
Introduction
In Chapter Three we posed a central problematique that the study of war within criminology has become synonymous with the ‘war on terrorism’. In this chapter (and those that follow) we offer this position some reinterpretation and development. This is done first by evidencing past and present criminological connections to the worst crimes conceivable under the broad rubric of ‘war’. Here we provide a general rejoinder to observations posed in William Laufer's (1999) ‘Forgotten criminology of genocide’. Following Laufer (1999) we illustrate criminology's historical relationship to genocide and, more specifically, with the Holocaust. Next, we define and critically discuss the term ‘genocide’ as an international crime. Finally, we outline some of the ways in which criminologists have addressed genocide throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. Here we consider most recent scholarship in this area focusing attention on genocidal violence occurring in South and Southeast Asia at the time of writing. This is followed by some concluding thoughts on the continued challenges facing the criminological study of genocide.
In discussing the social phenomenon of genocide in these ways we do not intend to offer an exhaustive overview of the histories or interdisciplinarity of genocide studies, nor provide detailed case studies and profiles of genocides past and present. Others have already achieved these things successfully outwith criminology (see Totten and Bartrop, 2009; Bartrop, 2015), as well as within the discipline. Instead, the discussion here is dedicated to some of the historical and conceptual challenges of studying genocide as a criminological and sociological endeavour, thereby illustrating emergent agendas for criminological studies of war to address.
The Holocaust: connecting criminology to genocide
Returning briefly to Hagan and Greer's (2002) criminological account of the Nuremberg trials (Chapter Two), despite Glueck's substantial contribution to international legal practices relating to war crimes, this involvement was short lived. As Hagan and Greer (2002: 255) note, notwithstanding his influence in foregrounding crimes against humanity within the Nuremberg trials (discussed later), Glueck ‘joined other criminologists in ignoring war crimes’ for the remainder of his career and, ‘like those who surrounded him in post-war policymaking circles, he displayed little inclination to take on the culture and social structure that allowed the Holocaust to happen’.
one - Introduction: Can there be a ‘Criminology of War’?
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- Bristol University Press
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- 03 July 2019, pp 1-14
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Summary
Introduction
Some time ago Anthony Giddens noted an ‘oddity’ within sociology. When conceptualising ways of thinking about the nation-state he suggested that, ‘it is very unlikely that he or she will discover any discussions of military institutions, or of the impact of military violence and war upon modern society’ (Giddens, 1985: 22). The peculiarity insinuated by this remark is that the absence of war, as a common sociological interest, both past and present, is counterintuitive since war and war violence have had impacts on the social world in significant and undeniable ways throughout history (Giddens, 1985). As we will go on to discuss in Chapter Two, other scholars have pointed out more recently that the study of society, politics and culture have often been marginal interests to those studying war and military institutions; likewise, war and war violence are suggested to have been scarcely paid any significant attention by sociologists (see, for example, Barkawi, 2006; Ware, 2009). Although prominent works within historical sociology have been influential in addressing war in relation to state practices (for example, see Tilly, 1975, and of course, Giddens, 1985, noted above), such contributions ‘have remained sporadic’ (Eulriet, 2010: 61). Put simply, although ‘war’ and war violence has raged consistently in one form or another on every continent following the ‘century of peace’ (1815–1914), and certainly during the subsequent 100 years since the cessation of the First World War in 1918 to the present day (we are indeed writing parts of this book during 2018), sociological interest and attention to the incitement, perpetration and consequences of ‘war’ has failed to match the historical prevalence, global reach or influential scale of this violent social phenomenon.
Instead, attention to war and military issues within sociology has been largely relegated to the ‘estranged’ interests of military sociology (Eulriet, 2010: 62). Indeed, as Martin Shaw (1984: 4) noted some time ago within War, State and Society, ‘Military sociology has been primarily concerned with institutional analysis, with the social organisation of armed forces and the way this influences their goals.’ Heinecken (2015) suggests that the redirection of these interests to study the military institution, and the neglect of a detailed study of war and its relationship to social and political change within sociology, is the Achilles heel of the discipline.
References
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- 03 July 2019, pp 167-194
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three - The War on Terrorism: Criminology’s ‘Third War’
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- 03 July 2019, pp 41-60
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Summary
Introduction
In a 2003 special issue of Theoretical Criminology, Ruth Jamieson assembled a collection of essays which variously addressed war and human rights. Their purpose was to highlight, as Kaldor (2014) also suggests, ‘new’ wars are often ‘internal civil conflicts’ that emphasise the ‘local expression of global processes, politics and sentiments’ (Jamieson, 2003: 259). Jamieson concluded these essays had ‘necessarily produced omissions’, which most obviously included
the subject matter of The Hague and Arusha Tribunals (grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, crimes against humanity, sexual violence and armed conflict, genocide, violations of the laws and customs of war) or with the post-9/11 renewal of interest in (global) terrorism, just war theory, the arms trade or the need to rethink the issue of policing, ‘securitization’ and the convergence of internal and external security. (Jamieson, 2003: 262, emphasis added)
While we go on to deal with many of these issues in later chapters, in this chapter we wish to draw attention to the ‘omissions’ noted above, which we instead interpret as key focal points for the contemporary criminological study of war. The chapter begins by suggesting that in the aftermath of 9/11 the ‘war on terrorism’ became the main interest of criminological studies related to war. Here this is understood as conceptualising war in metaphorical terms reflecting two emergent agendas. First, we outline a ‘crime/security nexus’ illustrated by studies taking counterterrorism and matters of ‘security’ as their main concern post-9/11 in order to address the (internal/domestic) consequences of the ‘war on terror’. Second, we outline examples from the literature addressing the (external/global) consequences of the ‘war on terrorism’ as a ‘war/crime nexus’ (Jamieson, 1998); identified at macro, meso and micro levels of analysis. In presenting these two prongs of the literature, we argue that the post-9/11 era can be understood as a period of increased activity within criminology that overwhelmingly interwove a ‘renewal of interest’ (Jamieson, 2003: 262) between matters of war, crime and security, under the auspices of the ‘war on terrorism’. We conclude, this agenda provides the foundation for the critique of, and departure from, criminological engagement with war found in the remainder of this book: that is, following 9/11 the contemporary meaning of a ‘criminology of war’ became tantamount to the ‘war on terrorism’.
five - From Nuclear to ‘Degenerate’ War
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- A Criminology of War?
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- 03 July 2019, pp 83-104
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Summary
Introduction
As has become evident in previous chapters, criminological scholars have demonstrated notable engagement with the subject of war, during and in the aftermaths of the First and Second World Wars (Chapter Two), prominently in the post-9/11 era (Chapter Three), and in response to acts of genocides throughout the 20th and 21st centuries (Chapter Four). However, although capturing war and genocide at either extreme of the transition from ‘old’ to ‘new’ wars (see Kaldor, 2014, discussed in the Introduction), this is not all criminologists have had to say on the subject. They have also been active commentators on nuclear issues since the end of the Cold War era. To explore some of this commentary, in this and the following chapter we address the changing nature of war within modernity as it turned towards the disproportionate mass killing of civilians following on from the Second World War.
This chapter foregrounds previous criminological work related to nuclear issues with a specific focus on David Kauzlarich and Ronald Kramer's (1998) seminal book Crimes of the American Nuclear State: At Home and Abroad. This book is first used here to define nuclear weapons and armament as ‘state crimes’ and identify the human consequences of using nuclear weapons from a critical criminological perspective. Next, we use the work of Kauzlarich and Kramer (1998) and Kramer and Kauzlarich (2010) to identify other ways in which the ‘crimes of the nuclear state’ could be considered differently in relation to Shaw’s (2003) concept of ‘degenerate war’. In doing so, we shift the focal point for criminological analysis onto the disproportionate targeting of civilians in war during the 20th and 21st centuries. This brings war victims and the environment more fully to our attention, rather than purely focusing on ‘criminals’ and criminality. The chapter concludes noting the contemporary relevance of nuclear issues for criminological studies of war. It finishes by providing a platform on which aerial ‘terror bombing’ can be further explored (in Chapter Six) as continuing to be disproportionately directed at civilians and non-combatants as a weapon of ‘new’ war.
Criminology and nuclear war
During 1983, an article published by Richard Harding outlined some preliminary issues for criminology with regards to nuclear weapons and nuclear armament.
Frontmatter
- Ross McGarry, University of Liverpool, Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool
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- Book:
- A Criminology of War?
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- Bristol University Press
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