The 24 February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has stunned many people who did not expect to see a major war in 21st century Europe. Several commentators have described this conflict as ‘a cold war relic’ or ‘the remnant of the barbaric past’. Similarly, the unprecedented scale of civilian mass killings and the near complete destruction of human habitat in Gaza have shocked public opinion all over the globe. This conflict was also referred to as ‘free fall descent into barbarism’ that has no place in the 21st century. The ongoing wars in Myanmar, DC Congo, Ethiopia, and Sudan have also been characterized by politicians and journalists as the ‘vestiges from the previous, less enlightened, times’. Although social scientists are unlikely to make such simplistic historical analogies there has been a strong tendency within contemporary sociology to downplay or even ignore the role warfare plays in social life (Malešević & Olsson 2022; Centeno & Enriquez 2016; Malešević 2010). Until quite recently war has been a marginal topic in mainstream sociological research. This topic was generally associated with military sociology or peace studies. However, neither of these two research fields focus systematically on the study of the relationship between war and society. Most military sociologists explore the social dynamics of armed forces and zoom in on the civil-military relationships. In contrast, the sociologists of peace are primarily interested in the post-conflict environments where they analyze the fluctuations in the peace processes (Brewer 2013). These research fields pay little or no attention to war as a sociological phenomenon that shapes nearly all aspects of social life (Malešević 2010: 50). By reducing warfare to military experience and peace processes one cannot understand how central warfare has been for the development of modern social order.

In the conventional understanding, war is perceived as an aberrant phenomenon that periodically interrupts normal social life. Nevertheless, nearly all key modern institutions have their origins in war. The dominant form of polity today, the nation-state, is a product of series of inter-state wars. As Wimmer (2018, 2012) demonstrates convincingly warfare was the prime catalyst of state transformation: with the proliferation of armed conflicts from the late 18th century onwards nation-states have gradually replaced empires, patrimonial kingdoms, city-states, and tribal confederacies.  The democratic institutions also owe their existence to war – from ancient Athens to medieval Switzerland democracy was a product of self-armed farmer soldiers who acquired voting rights based on their regular and willing participation in wars. Similarly, citizenship rights have historically been linked to one’s commitment to pay taxes and serve in the armed forces.  To facilitate greater popular support and wider participation in war the governments were forced to expand civil rights to different social strata. The same principle was at work in the rise of the welfare state. It is no historical accident that the first welfare provisions and the society-wide social policy measures were pioneered by the most militarist state in Europe – 19th century Prussia. By expanding the welfare provisions the government was able to secure support for the waves of mass mobilization for war. As Tilly (1992) showed long time ago war made states and states made war: protracted wars fostered the development of modern state administration, effective systems of revenue collection, and the mass-scale transport and communication networks. With wars becoming very costly the rulers were forced to establish more effective systems of taxation and resource extraction, expand the military draft, and generate better systems of capital accumulation. In this context, state authorities have managed to institute a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence over the territory under their control. The unintended corollary of these tectonic changes was the rise of civil society and the extension of religious, political, and social rights to wider sectors of the population.

To implement successful mechanisms for military recruitment states have also crated compulsory educational systems centered on inculcating sense of national loyalty among their populations. It is through the proliferation of inter-state wars that nationalism has become the dominant social glue of modern societies. As Wimmer (2012:4) emphasizes: ‘Nationalism thus motivated a bloody, generation-long struggle over who should rule over whom. It lasted until the like over like principle was realized through border changes, expulsions and ethnic cleansings, assimilation and nation-building or political accommodation or power sharing between various ethnic elites’.

War has also been a principal catalyst for the development of science and technology as nearly all main technological inventions were pioneered in the military sector and then found their mass application elsewhere – from the wheel, stirrup, and compass to the assembly line, pharmaceutics, fast food, internet, robotics, and artificial intelligence (Malešević 2017, 2010). The expansion of warfare was also instrumental in the rise of the public sphere that developed hand in hand with the increased industrialization, and urbanization. Warfare has also stimulated increased literacy and the proliferation of mass media. The two total wars of the 20th century were also instrumental in transforming gender relations and have contributed towards delegitimization of racism. With the mass mobilization of men, governments had no other option but to open the labor force to women which ultimately changed the gender dynamics in 20th century. Similarly, the direct consequence of mass recruitment of soldiers from the imperial colonies who fought against Nazism and fascism was delegitimization of racism and imperialism that ultimately resulted in the collapse of old imperial structures. Many other spheres of social life have been directly or indirectly shaped by the legacies of various wars. Since no other social phenomenon has transformed human history as much as warfare it seems rather strange that mainstream 20th and 21st century sociology has been so reluctant to engage with war.    

Nevertheless, this has not always been the case. Many classical sociologists including Otto Hintze, Ludwig Gumplowitz, Gustav Ratzenhofer, Franz Oppenheimer, Alexander Rüstow, Emil Lederer, Lester Ward, Vilfredo Pareto, and Gaetano Mosca were preoccupied with the study of war and violence. Even the better-known classics such as Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, and Addams have analyzed different aspects of warfare. The fin de siècle sociology was at the forefront of war research. The early historical sociologists such as Otto Hintze and Franz Oppenheimer have provided the first systematic explorations of the relationship between war and state formation. They both argue that the institution of the state originates in warfare and as such it also remains dependent on the historical dynamics of organized violence. Moreover, Hintze shows how many modern institutions such as parliaments and local assemblies owe their existence to war as they initially emerged from the medieval congregations of warriors preparing for military undertakings. Rüstow and Gumplowitz also link state development to class relations. They show how social stratification in the contemporary world originates in the traditional military monopolies of the warrior castes who have conquered neighboring populations and established complex and unequal division of labor. After WWII much of this scholarship was forgotten, disregarded, or mischaracterized as belonging to the notorious social Darwinist camp (Malešević 2010).

Even the contributions on organized violence by the much better-known classics such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Spencer, Simmel, and Addams have been ignored. Marx has explored the relationship between capitalism and revolutionary violence and has also analyzed warfare as a generator of social change. Weber identified organized violence as a foundation of state power and linked the process of rationalization to the expansion of discipline, coercive power, and war. Durkheim traced the dynamics of group solidarity in times of violent conflicts and showed how egoistic and anomic suicides decrease during wartime. Spencer differentiated between the militant, war-prone and collectivist, societies and the industrial, highly individualized, societies and argued that in the former nation becomes an army while in the later trade rather than force dominates social relationships. Simmel coined the concept of ‘absolute situation’ to explain social life in times of war. He argued that in the context of war, there are no relative situations anymore and all decisions became decisions about life and death (Malešević 2010: 20-44). Jane Addams has also pioneered the feminist approach in the study of war and peace. Nevertheless, all these contributions of classical sociology were neglected until the 1980s when several comparative historical and political sociologists revisited this vast scholarship.   

In the late 1970s and early 1980s the Cold War intensified the arms race between the NATO and the Warsaw Pact. With the Soviet deployment of a new missile, the SS-20, in Eastern Europe the US government decided to deploy Pershing II launchers and long-range missiles to Western European countries. In this highly militarized context, some political sociologists such as Mary Kaldor and Martin Shaw generated neo-Marxist analyses of war and militarism. At the same time, comparative historical sociologists including Charles Tilly, Michael Mann, John A. Hall, and Anthony Giddens developed their own theories of state formation and power that identified war as a key catalyst of social change. However, the central focus of this research was the state rather than warfare as such and it took another few decades for sociologists to take the study of war seriously.

It is only in the early 2000s, in the aftermath of the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, that the sociology of war has emerged as a fully-fledged academic research area (Malešević & Olsson 2022; Centeno & Enriquez 2016). Since then, sociologists have produced substantial research on different aspects of this phenomenon. After many decades of disciplinary neglect, the study of war is currently experiencing a mini renaissance.  Nevertheless, much of this remains invisible to mainstream sociology. In this context, comparative historical and political sociologists including Miguel Centeno, Anthony King, Michael Mann, Jocelyn Viterna, Andreas Wimmer, Victoria Tin-Bor Hui, Dingxin Zhao, and others have analyzed how war has shaped and continues to shape almost every aspect of social life. Contemporary sociologists of war have made significant analytical breakthroughs in understanding the historical trajectory of organized violence, tracing the impact inter-state and intra-state have on social order, exploring the relationship between warfare and social cleavages such as gender, class or ethnicity,  analyzing the impact of wars on state formation and in the micro-sociology of war experience (Malešević 2022, 2017, 2010).

Hence, war is not an exception that suddenly interrupts normal social life. Nearly every aspect of social life including governance structures, social hierarchies, gender and sexual relations, religious identities, class dynamics, ethno-racial stratification, educational practices, heath systems and administrative apparatuses have all been molded by legacies of specific wars. Whether we like it or not, warfare has historically been and remains a norm that constantly shapes our social order. Recent sociological research shows how central warfare has been in the development of the social order we inhabit today. Sociologists of organized violence have made significant advances in understanding the complex and contradictory relationships between warfare and society. There is now a wealth of new knowledge about the macro-historical transformations of organized violence, the relationship between war and the main social cleavages, and the micro-social dynamics of war experience. Nevertheless, many of these contributions remain invisible or marginal within mainstream sociology. It is paramount to now integrate the study of war fully into the sociological mainstream.

References:

Brewer, J. 2013. Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach. Cambridge: Polity.

Centeno, M. & E. Enriquez 2016. War and Society. Cambridge: Polity.

Malešević, S. 2022. Why Humans Fight: The Social Dynamics of Close-Range Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Malešević, S. 2017. The Rise of Organised Brutality: A Historical Sociology of Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Malešević, S. 2010. The Sociology of War and Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Malešević, S. & C. Olsson 2022. Organised Violence and Historical Sociology. In: D. McCallum (ed) Handbook of History of Human Sciences. New York: Springer.

Tilly, C. 1992. Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990-1992. Cambridge: Blackwell.

Wimmer, A. 2018. The Nation-Building. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Wimmer, A. 2012. The Waves of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.