University of Sussex

BA International Relations

Final Year option, Autumn 2002

Course summary

If you are working with a hard copy of this list, online references will be underlined. To access these, you will need to use the online version at www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/hafa3/lists/war.htm

Aims and objectives

War has been understood in IR as a function of conflicts between states and a question of foreign and defence policy. This course aims, in contrast, to ask what it means to understand war as a social activity, in the context of other kinds of social relations.

The course aims to confront this issue both theoretically, starting with Clausewitz, and empirically, e.g. in studies of why 'ordinary men' participated in the Nazi genocide. It also aims to introduce ideas and research on the contradictory social effects of warfare as a lever for social change (e.g. in gender relations) as well as genocide, in the context of an approach to the historical sociology of total war.

The course deals with debates about the transformations of war and militarism, beginning with the general sociological debate on contemporary militarism, including military sociology, feminist and other approaches to gender, and studies of media in warfare. It concludes with questions about transformations of war in the global era.

Course information

There will be a one-hour lecture session on Thursdays from 11.30-12.20 in A103, from weeks 1 to 9, with opportunity for questions and comments. Please interrupt if there is something you don't understand, or would like to argue with. Lecture notes will be online on the course website. 

Seminars will be on Mondays from 11.30-1.20 in C219, starting on the first day of term. The course will be broken into 3 groups of approximately 15 members, each of which will the two questions separately for the first 50 minutes. One member of the discussion group will produce a make a short presentation to introduce the discussion. 

There are no textbooks for this course. Reading is listed below under the seminar topics, with each list divided into 2 sections: essential readings and other.

In case of any items being unavailable in the Library, look for substitutes or consult me - in some cases I may be able to lend you the relevant book or article.

There will be one course essay of approximately 2000 words to be handed in at the seminar in week 6. You may write on any of the topics in the courses, using the seminar questions as a guide, or you may produce your own topics relevant to the themes of the course. If in doubt, consult.

The second item of coursework will be an outline of your term paper, to be submitted at the seminar in week 8 and given back with comments in week 10. This should include, on two sides of A4:

• a question or topic of your own devising, relating to the themes and arguments of the course;
• this may or may not be based on one of the seminar questions or topics, but should be on a different topic from your course essay;
• a summary of your proposed argument;
• a short bibliography (5-10 items).

The topic of your term paper should be clearly different from that of your course essay.

This course is assessed by a 4000 word term paper. Since submission is not until May, you may consult with me after the course has ended, either in my office hours or by email.

I am keen to hear your evaluations of this course and my teaching. Please raise difficulties as they arise. Course evaluation forms will be distributed in week 9.

I am always willing, like all members of faculty, to write references for every student on my courses. Please let me know if you would like to give my name as a referee, and supply me with your c.v. and any background information that might be useful in writing a reference. You may use my name in future, after completion of your degree, but keep me updated on your progress.

Week 1

At the meeting in the first week we will get to know each other and plan our meetings for the rest of the term. We will have a brainstorming session on 

What are the issues surrounding the war the US is preparing to fight against Iraq? How do we respond to them? How do they reflect on what we look for in a course on war in world politics?

I hope that these discussions will lead us on to the original topic for this session

War: what is it, why and how should we study it?

in the second half of the session.

2

SEMINAR QUESTIONS:

Karl von Clausewitz, On War (ed. Peter Paret & Michael Howard), Princeton UP 1976

Michael Howard, Clausewitz, Oxford University Press, 1981

WB Gallie, Philosophers of War and Peace (chapter on Clausewitz), Oxford UP 1978

Mary Kaldor, ‘Warfare and Capitalism’, in EP Thompson et al, Exterminism and Cold War, Verso 1982 and Chapter 1, 'Old Wars', of her New and Old Wars, 1999

John Keegan, The Face of Battle, Cape 1976

Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War, Macmillan 1991

Craig A Snyder, ed., Contemporary Security and Strategy, London: Macmillan 1999

Raymond Aron, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, RKP 1983

Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State, Clarendon Press 1976

Edward Mead Earle, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy, Princeton UP 1971

Michael Howard, The Causes of Wars, Allen & Unwin 1985, 1-115

Mary Kaldor, The Baroque Arsenal, Deutsch 1982

Martin Shaw, Post-Military Society, Polity 1991, chapter 1 (this out-of-print book is available from me and from the University Bookshop at a reduced price)

Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War, Columbia 1959

Kalevi J Holsti, Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order 1648-1989, Cambridge UP, Chapter 1, 1-24

Daniel S Geller and J David Singer, eds., Nations at War: A Scientific Study of International Conflict, Cambridge UP 1998

Leon Bramson and George W Goethals, eds, War: Studies from Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology, Basic Books 1978 (chs by Malinowski, Mead, Spencer)

Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, Methuen 1966

Anthony Storr, Human destructiveness: the roots of genocide and human cruelty, Routledge 1991

Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War, Virago 1997

3

Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume 2, Cambridge UP 1993, Chapter 1

Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, Polity 1985, Chapter 9

Christopher Dandeker, Surveillance, Power and Modernity, Polity 1990, Chapter 4, ‘Military Power, Capitalism and Surveillance’, 66-109

Charles Tilly, War making and state making as organized crime, in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge UP 1985, 169-85

Victor Kiernan, ‘Conscription and Society in Europe before the War of 1914’, in M R D Foot, ed., War and Society, Elek 1973

Kalevi J Holsti, The State, War and the State of War, Cambridge UP 1996, Chpaters 1 and 2, 1-40

Michael Mann, States, War and Capitalism, Blackwell 1988, Chapter 3, 'State and Society, 1130-1815'

Michael Howard, War and the Nation-State, Daedalus 108:4, 1979, 101-110

Brian M. Downing, The Military Revolution and Political Change in Early Modern Europe, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994; chapters 1 and 3, 3-17, 56-83.

Michael Roberts, ‘The Military Revolution 1560-1660’, in David B Ralston, ed, Soldiers and States: Civil-Military Relations in Modern Europe, Heath & Co, 1966

Victor Kiernan, European Empires from Conquest to Collapse 1815-1960, Fontana 1982

Brian Bond, War and Society in Europe 1870-1970, Fontana 1982

4

Michael Mann, ‘Capitalism and Militarism’ in Martin Shaw, ed, War, State and Society, Macmillan 1984 and in Mann, States, War and Capitalism, Blackwell 1988

Bernard Semmel, Marxism and the Science of War, Oxford UP 1981, esp 3-5, 66-71

Jacques van Doorn, The Soldier and Social Change, Sage 1973, Ch. 1, ‘The Genesis of Military and Industrial Organisation’, 5-28

William H MacNeill, The Pursuit of Power, Blackwell 1982

Maurice Pearton, The Knowledgeable State, Burnett Books 1982

John MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion 1880-1960, Manchester UP 1984

Raymond Aron, War and Industrial Society, OUP 1958

Raymond Aron, ‘War and Industrial Society: A Reappraisal’, Millennium, Vol. 7, 1978-9

VR Berghahn, Militarism, Cambridge UP 1984

EH Carr, ‘The Marxist Attitude to War’ (Note E), in The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, Penguin 1966

WB Gallie, Philosophers of War and Peace, Oxford UP 1978, Chapter on Marx/Engels

Nikolai Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy, Merlin 1972

Karl Liebknecht, Militarism and Anti-Militarism, Writers/Readers 1972

Mary Kaldor, The Baroque Arsenal, Deutsch 1982, especially Chapter 1, 'The Weapons System', 7-20

Martin Shaw, Dialectics of War, Pluto 1988; ‘War, imperialism and the state-system: a critique of orthodox marxism for the 1980s’, in Shaw, ed., War, State and Society, Macmillan 1984; Post-Military Society, Polity 1991, Chapter 1

5

Michael Mann, ‘The Roots and Contradictions of Modern Militarism’, States, War and Capitalism, Blackwell 1988, 166-87, and in New Left Review, 162, March-April 1987

Arthur Marwick, War and Social Change in the Twentieth Century, Macmillan 1974

Ernest Mandel, The Meaning of the Second World War, Verso 1986

Ian F W Beckett, ‘Total War’, in Colin McInnes & G D Sheffield, eds, Warfare in the Twentieth Century Theory and Practice, Unwin Hyman 1988, 1-24

Eric Markusen and David Kopf, The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century, Westview 1995

Martin Shaw, Dialectics of War, Pluto 1988, esp. Chapters 2 - 4

Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain 1939-45, Panther 1969

Arthur Marwick, ed., Total War and Social Change, Macmillan 1988

Alan S Milward, War, Economy and Society 1939-45, Allen Lane 1977

Peter Calvacoressi and Guy Wint, Total War: Causes and Courses of the Second World War, Penguin 1974

Stanislav Andreski, Military Organisation and Society (2nd edition), RKP 1968

Corelli Barnett, The Audit of War, Macmillan 1986

Tom Harrisson, Living through the Blitz, Penguin 1978

Open University, War and Society: World War I, World War II, Milton Keynes, Open U Press 1973

Christopher Thorne, The Far Eastern War: States and Societies 1941-45, Unwin 1986

Studs Terkel, ‘The Good War’: An Oral History of World War Two, Penguin 1986

Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War, OUP 1989

Arthur Marwick, Britain in the Century of Total War, Penguin 1968; The Deluge, Bodley Head 1965, or ‘The Impact of the First World War on British Society’, J. Contemp. Hist., III, 1968

Paul Addison, The Road to 1945, Quartet 1975

Penny Summerfield , ‘Women, War and Social Change: Women in Britain in World War II’ in Arthur Marwick, ed., Total War and Social Change, Macmillan 1988, 95-118

Jurgen Kocka, Facing Total War (German society 1914-18), Berg 1985

David M Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society, Oxford UP 1980

Kathleen Burk, War and the State: The Transformation of British Government 1914-1919, Allen & Unwin 1982

Keith Middlemas, Politics in an Industrial Society, Deutsch 1979, Ch. 3

Ralph Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism , Merlin 1973, Ch. 11

6

Leo Kuper, Genocide, Penguin 1981

James J Reid, 'Total war, the annihilation ethic, and the Armenian genocide, 1870-1918' in R G Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian genocide: history, politics, ethics, Macmillan 1992 (see also other chapters)

Christopher Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992

Eric Markusen and David Kopf, The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century, Westview 1995

Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity 1991

Robert J Lifton and Eric Markusen, The Genocidal Mentality: The Nazi Holocaust and the Nuclear Threat, London: Macmillan 1988

Charles B. Strozier and Michael Flynn, Genocide, War and Human Survival, Lantham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield 1996

H Fein, Genocide: a sociological perspective, Sage 1993 (First published as Current sociology, 38, 1, 1990)

F Chalk & K Jonassohn, The history and sociology of genocide: analyses and case studies, Yale UP 1990

Irving L Horowitz, Taking lives: genocide and state power, Transaction 1997

GJ Andreopoulos, ed, Genocide : conceptual and historical dimensions, U of Pennsylvania P 1994

SS Graber, Caravans to Oblivion: The Armenian Genocide, 1915, New York: Wiley, 1996

Lucy Davidowicz, The War against the Jews, Penguin 1985

Sarah Gordon, Hitler, Germans and the ‘Jewish Question’, Princeton UP 1984

Arno Mayer, Why did the Heavens not Darken? The Final Solution in History, Verso 1989

Ronald Aronson, The Dialectics of Disaster, Verso 1983

D J Goldhagen, Hitler's willing executioners: ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Little, Brown 1996

Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1996

Martin Shaw, Dialectics of War, Pluto 1988, esp. Chs 2, 4

EP Thompson, ‘Notes on Exterminism, the Last Stage of Civilization’, in New Left Review, ed., Exterminism and Cold War, Verso 1982

7

Essential readings

Tony Ashworth, The Live and Let Live System, Macmillan 1981 and ‘Sociology of Trench Warfare’, British Journal of Sociology, 1968

Christopher R Browning, Ordinary Men, Harper 1992

D J Goldhagen, Hitler's willing executioners: ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Little, Brown 1996

Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, victims, bystanders: the Jewish catastrophe 1933-1945. London: Lime Tree,1993

M D Ryan, ed., Human responses to the Holocaust: perpetrators and victims, bystanders and resisters, New York: Edwin Mellen 1981

Mark J. Osiel, Obeying Orders: Atrocity, Military Discipline and the Law of War, Transaction 1999, especially 'Why do men fight?', 201-222

Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books, 1984, Ch. 4

John Hockey, Squaddies: Portrait of a Sub-Culture, Exeter University Press 1986

Charles Moskos, The American Enlisted Man, Sage 1970

Leopold Haimson & Charles Tilly, eds., Strikers, Wars and Revolutions in International Perspective, CUP 1989

Dallas, Gloden, The Unknown Army: Mutinies in the British Army in the World War I, Verso 1985

Knowlton, J. and Cates, T., eds., Forever in the Shadow of Hitler, NJ 1993 (aarticles by Nolte, Habermas)

Evans, R.J., In Hitler's Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past, London 1989

Michael Robert Marrus, ed., The Nazi Holocaust. Volume 8, Bystanders to the Holocaust V.1 Publisher Westport: Meckler,1989

Raul Hilberg, The destruction of the European Jews. New York: Holmes, 1985

8

Essential readings

Penny Summerfield , ‘Women, War and Social Change: Women in Britain in World War II’ in Arthur Marwick, ed, Total War and Social Change, Macmillan 1988, 95-118

Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s Lives, Pluto 1983

Sharon Macdonald et al., Images of Women in Peace and War: Cross-cultural and historical perspectives, Macmillan 1987

Cynthia Cockburn, 'The gendered dynamics of armed conflict and political violence', and Caroline Moser, 'The gendered continuum of violence and conflict', in Moser and Fiona C. Clark, eds., Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? London: Zed 2001

I. Skjelsbaek, 'Sexual Violence and War', European Journal of International Relations, 7, 2, 2001

Seifert, R. 'War and Rape' in A Stiglmayer, ed., Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, U of Nebraska P 1994

C. Twagiramariya and M. Turshen, '"Favours" to give and "consenting" victims: the sexual politics of survival in Rwanda', in Twagiramariya and Turshen, eds., What Women Do in Wartime, Zed 1998

Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender, Cambridge UP 2001

Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War, Harvester 1987

Gail Braybon and Penny Summerfield, Out of the Cage: Women's experiences in two world wars, Pandora 1987

Gail Braybon,Women Workers in the First World War, Croom Helm 1981

Penny Summerfield, Women Workers in the Second World War: production and patriarchy in conflict, Croom Helm 1984

Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland, Methuen 1988

Sara Ruddick, ‘Preserving Love and Military Destruction’ in J Trebilot, ed., Mothering, Rowman & Allanheld 1984

Kath Price, 'What did you do in the war, Mam?' in Colin Creighton and Martin Shaw, eds, The Sociology of War and Peace, Macmillan 1987

Dorothy Sheridan, ed, Wartime Women, Heinemann 1990

Arthur Marwick, Women at War 1914-18, Fontana 1974

Stuart Sillars , Women in World War I, Macmillan 1987

Costello, John, Love, Sex and War Changing Values 1939-45, Pan 1985

Carol Berkin and Clara Lovett, Women, War and Revolution, Holmes and Meier 1980

Eva Isaksson, ed,Women and the Military System, Harvester-Wheatsheaf 1988

Mady Wechsler Segal, ‘The Military and the Family as Greedy Institutions’ and Patricia M Shields, ‘Sex Roles in the Military’, in Charles Moskos and Frank Wood, The Military: More than Just a Job?, Pergamon-Brassey 1988, 79-114

Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women, Routledge 1996, Part 2, ‘The Gendered Politics of War and Peace’, 87-156

Ruth Jolly, Military Man, Family Man, Crown Property? Brasseys 1987

Lynn Jones, ‘Perceptions of "peace women" at Greenham Common’ in Sharon MacDonald et al, Images of Women in Peace and War, Macmillan 1987

Meredith Turshen, 'The Political Economy of Rape' in Moser and Clark, eds., Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? London: Zed 2001

Amnesty International, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Rape and Sexual Abuse by Armed Forces, Amnesty 1993

Jan Willem Honig & Norbert Both, Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime, Penguin 1996

Ronit Lentin, ed, Gender and Catastrophe, Zed 1997

Sections on 'sexual violence' in Roy Guttman and David Rieff, eds, Crimes of War, Norton 1999

Rayika Omaar and Alex de Waal, Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, Africa Rights 1994

Lori Buck, Nicole Gallant and Kim Richard Nossal, 'Sanctions as a gendered instrument of statecraft: the case of Iraq', Review of International Studies, 24, 1, 1998, 69-84

Inger Skjelsbaek, Sexual Violence and War: Mapping out a Complex Relationship, European Journal of International Relations, 7, 2, 2001

9

Michael Mann, ‘The Roots and Contradictions of Modern Militarism’, in his War, States and Capitalism, Blackwell 1988 (also in New Left Review, 162, March-April 1987)

Luckham, Robin, ‘Of Arms and Culture’, Current Research on Peace and Violence, VII, 1, 1-64, 1984

Jacques Van Doorn, The Soldier and Social Change: Comparative Studies in the History and Sociology of the Military, Sage 1973, Ch. 3, ‘The Decline of Mass Armies’, 51-64

Philip M Taylor, War and the Media: Propaganda and Persuasion in the Gulf War, Manchester University Press, 1992

Martin Shaw, Civil Society and Media in Global Crises: Representing Distant Violence, London: Pinter 1996, Chapters 6 and 8

Mel McNulty, 'Media Ethnicization and the International Response to War and Genocide in Rwanda', in Tim Allen and Jean Seaton, eds., The Media of Conflict: War Reporting and Representations of Ethnic Violence, Zed 1999, 268-86

V R Berghahn, Militarism: The History of an International Debate 1861-1979, Cambridge UP 1981

Alfred Vagts, A history of militarism, civilian and military, Hollis 1959

Charles C. Moskos et al., eds., The Postmodern Military, OUP 1999

W Lance Bennett and David L Paletz, eds, Taken by Storm, London: University of Chicago Press, 1994

Jean Baudrillard, ‘La Guerre de Golfe n'a pas eu lieu’, Libération, 29 March 1991, translation, The Gulf War did not take place, Sydney 1995

Christopher Norris, Uncritical Theory: Post-modernism, Intellectuals and the Gulf War, Lawrence and Wishart, 1992

David E Morrison, Television and the Gulf War, John Libbey 1992

RE Denton, ed., The Media and the Persian Gulf War, Praeger 1993

D. Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV War, Westview, 1992

Greg Philo and Greg McLaughlin, The British Media and the Gulf War, Glasgow: Glasgow University Media Group 1993

Michael Ignatieff, 'Is Nothing Sacred? The Ethics of Television', in The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience, Chatto and Windus 1998, 9-33

Edward S Herman, 'The Media's Role in US Foreign Policy', Journal of International Affairs, 47, 1, 1993

Noam Chomsky and B. Dajenais, Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon, 1988

Derrick Mercer et al., The Fog of War: The Media on the Battlefield, Heinemann 1987

Peter Viggo Jakobsen, ‘National Interest, Humanitarianism or CNN: What triggers UN peace enforcement after the Cold War?’, Journal of Peace Research, 33, 1996, 205-15

Stephen Badsey, Modern Military Operations and the Media, Camberley, Surrey: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 1994

Nacos, Brigitte L., Terrorism and the media: from the Iran hostage crisis to the World Trade Center bombing. New York: Columbia U.P., 1994

Lederman, Jim, Battle lines: the American media and the Intifada. Boulder: Westview,1993

Akiba A. Cohen and Gadi Wolfsfeld, eds., Framing the Intifada: people and media. Norwood N.J.: Ablex,1993

Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Polity 1999

Kalevi J Holsti, The State, War and the State of War, Cambridge UP 1996, Chapter 7, 123-49

Andrew Latham, 'Reimagining Warfare: The "Revolution in Military Affairs"', in Craig A Snyder, ed, Contemporary Security and Strategy, London: Macmillan 1999, 210-37

Michael Mandelbaum, 'Is major war obsolete?' and Lawrence Freedman, 'The changing forms of military conflict', Survival 40, 4,1998-99, 20-38 and 39-56

Mary Kaldor and Basker Vashee, eds, New Wars, Pinter 1998; Kaldor, Ulrich Albrecht and Genevieve Schmeder, eds, The End of Military Fordism, Pinter 1998

Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience, Chatto and Windus 1998

Mats Berdal and David M. Malone, eds., Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars', Rienner 2000

Edward N Luttwak, ‘Towards Post-Heroic Warfare’, Foreign Affairs, 74, 3, 1995

Colin Gray, Modern Strategy, Oxford UP 1998, on 'small wars'

Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century, Little Brown 1993

V Borschneier and C Chase-Dunne, eds., The future of global conflict, Sage 1999

James der Derian, Antidiplomacy: spies, terror, speed and war, Blackwell 1992

Michael Mandelbaum, 'Learning to be warless', Survival, 41, 2, 1999, 149-52