Read more
"This book offers a novel, sociological, answer to the old age question: 'Why humans fight?'. Instead of focusing on the motivations of solitary individuals Maleéseviâc emphasises the centrality of social and historical contexts that make fighting possible. He argues that fighting is not an individual attribute, but a social phenomenon shaped by one's relationships with other people. Drawing on the recent scholarship across variety of academic disciplines and his own interviews with the former combatants Maleéseviâc shows that one's willingness to fight is a contextual phenomenon shaped by specific ideological and organisational logic. The book explores the role biology, psychology, economics, ideology, and coercion play in one's experience of fighting and emphasises the cultural and historical variability of combativeness. Using numerous historical and contemporary examples from all over the world Maleéseviâc demonstrates how social pugnacity is a relational and contextual phenomenon that possesses autonomous features"--
List of contents
Acknowledgements; Introduction: The social anatomy of fighting; 1. The body and the mind: Biology and the close-range violence; 2. Profiting from fighting: The economics of micro-level violence; 3. Clashing beliefs: The ideological fighters; 4. Enforcing fighting: Coercing humans into violence; 5. Fighting for others: The networks of micro-bonds; 6. Avoiding violence: The structural context of non-fighting; 7. Social pugnacity in the combat zone; 8. Organisational power and social cohesion on the battlefield; 9. Emotions and the close-range fighting; 10. Killing in war: The emotional dynamics of pugnacity; 11. The future of close-range violence; Conclusion.
About the author
Siniša Malešević is Professor of Sociology at the University College, Dublin, and Senior Fellow at CNAM, Paris. His recent books include Contemporary Sociological Theory (with S. Loyal, 2021), Grounded Nationalisms (2019), The Rise of Organised Brutality (2017) and Nation-States and Nationalisms (2013). His work has been translated into 13 languages.
Summary
Maleševic offers a novel sociological answer to the age-old question: 'Why do humans fight?'. Instead of focusing on the motivations of individuals, this book emphasises the centrality of the social contexts that make fighting possible. It will appeal to students and scholars of war, violent crime, and inter-personal violence.
