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The enormous body of literature on the militarism of nations centers on the tumultuous encounters of martial forces, the political events preceding such encounters, and the cessation of hostilities with victory declared by one side. In recent years, scholars have probed beneath the actions of a particular solider, commander, or martial force, seeking to identify the root causes of civilian devastation. The plight of civilians in wars of all kinds—their extreme vulnerability to the lethal effects of combat and the scale and scope of their devastation—represent a serious challenge to the international community that has, to date, eluded resolution. The editors of this volume believe that none of the works to date examines in detail a cardinal aspect of the categories of, and relations between, civilian combatants and noncombatants. This missing aspect in recent literature on this topic is the objectification of civilians, who are cast alternatively as objects of war, frictions to the war machine, hindrances to the movement of forces, potential combatants, possible collaborators with the enemy, and so on. Such discursive practices reinforce tacitly held assumptions about the life, existence, and proper placement of civilians in relation to the primary agents of war. Underlying this is a set of practices that represent war’s unofficial face, practices that are often disguised, suppressed, and distorted. The freedoms and rights that civilians enjoy, or at least sought, in times of peace must be suppressed in order for the machines of war to operate properly. The instruments of control—laws, edicts, doctrines, polities, and principles that define notions of normalcy—reinforce notions of civilian identity, their proper relationship to combatants, and military and legal norms for their behavior in times of war. The volume editors believe that certain forms of identity constructions influence strategies and tactics that create the preconditions and mechanisms of civilian vulnerability. Recent advances in the understanding of intergroup conflict (racial, religious, ethnic, and nationalistic) have a direct bearing on the studies of civilians in war.
This book explores the issue of civilian devastation in modern warfare, focusing on the complex processes that effectively establish civilians’ identity in times of war.
Underpinning the physicality of war’s tumult are structural forces that create landscapes of civilian vulnerability. Such forces operate in four sectors of modern warfare: nationalistic ideology, state-sponsored militaries, global media, and international institutions. Each sector promotes its own constructions of civilian identity in relation to militant combatants: constructions that prove lethal to the civilian noncombatant who lacks political power and decision-making capacity with regards to their own survival.
Civilians and Modern War provides a critical overview of the plight of civilians in war, examining the political and normative underpinnings of the decisions, actions, policies, and practices of major sectors of war. The contributors seek to undermine the ‘tunnelling effect’ of the militaristic framework regarding the experiences of noncombatants.
This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, ethics, conflict resolution, and IR/Security Studies.
