On 'War and Society'

The sociological study of war has experienced nothing less than a renaissance during the past fifteen years. Among the milestones in the reappearance of war in broader sociological thought was the somewhat disjointed English translation of Hans Joas’ essay collection War and Modernity.1 In the essays, originally published in the mid-1990s, Joas criticized the way social thought had largely disregarded war as a part of the otherwise seemingly idyllic and peaceful modern times. Similar criticism has continued since with Siniša Malešević’s seminal The Sociology of War and Violence2 and Joas and Wolfgang Knöbl’s War in Social Thought.3 Combined with insights from historical sociologists like Michael Mann4 and Charles Tilly,5 who showed how state development and war were intimately linked in Europe, it became difficult to disregard the importance of war to our lives and societies. The rediscovered focus on the sociological study of war emphasized that while classic sociology had engaged with war, the optimism towards progress and sociology that followed the Second World War meant that there was little appetite within the discipline for studying war. During the Cold War, the study of war was relegated to a niche in military sociology, which narrowly focused on the Western state bureaucracies that answered for managing external violence.6 As sociological phenomena, war and warfighting were largely ignored. Wars nevertheless continued to be fought. Some of those who sought decolonization found violence necessary, even desirable.7 While