The Paradoxes of War teaches us to understand that war is not only a normal part of human existence, but is arguably one of the most important factors in making us who we are. Through this course, I hope that you will come to appreciate that war is both a natural expression of common human emotions and interactions and a constitutive part of how we cohere as groups. That is, war is paradoxically an expression of our basest animal nature and the exemplar of our most vaunted and valued civilized virtues. You will learn some basic military history and sociology in this course as a lens for the more important purpose of seeing the broader social themes and issues related to war. I want you to both learn about war, but more importantly, use it as way of understanding your everyday social world. So, for example, the discussion of war and gender will serve to start you thinking about how expectations of masculinity are created and our discussion of nationalism will make clear how easy “us-them” dichotomies can be established and (ab)used. I will suggest some readings for you to complement the class and assign some activities through which you will be able to apply the theoretical insights from the course to your observations of everyday life. At the end of the course, you will start to see war everywhere and come to appreciate how much it defines our life. All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion.
War and Citizenship I
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Del curso dictado por Princeton University
Paradoxes of War
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De la lección
Social Aspects of War: Democracy, Citizenship, and Social Equality
Wars also develop citizenship and democratic demands
Conoce a los instructores
Miguel A. CentenoMusgrave Professor of Sociology and Professor of Sociology and International Affairs
Sociology
Hello.
We're going to continue our discussion of how war helps build societies.
That is, how war helps shape the societies that actually fight it.
And now we're going to talk about three concepts
that are probably not often associated with war.
That it's three concepts that we value and
that we think of essential to modern society.
And I want to argue that these are also
related to war and the preparation for war.
And these are democracy, citizenship, and social equality.
And I want to show you, I want to argue, that war
may actually have a role in developing each one of these,
and that we can't understand the development of these three qualities
in modern society without at least some passing reference to war.
So let's begin with war and citizenship.
I want to argue that from the mid-19th Century through
the immediate post-World War II period, European and North American
armed forces served, in a sense, as a social institution
that only for national defense, that was their obvious role.
But also wants to shape young men
into productive and responsible members of society.
That these institutions weren't just military,
they were in a sense pedagogical.
I want to argue that through mobilization, exposure to
nationalist doctrine, and the cohesion encouraged by the shared danger.
Armies, in a sense, built citizens and nations.
On an individual level, the transformation that occurs when
one joins the military may be dramatic, but also very positive.
The initiation and training in the army may improve physical health.
They may teach basic skills, and encourage discipline, and self respect.
On a larger social level, on a
more aggregate level, the collective experience could introduce
previously isolated individuals to the variety of
ethnic groups with who they share a territory.
And built, in a sense, a sense of social camaraderie while
also exposing them to nationalist themes and sense of patriotic duty.
So consider this, the military service not only brings the population
together, not only shows different people who they share the space with,
but also provides a common grammar, and a common language, and
a common set of beliefs by which they can understand each other.
Now conscription, understood as a forced participation in the
military, is neither new, nor unique to modern western Europe,
but what distinguishes the European pattern after the 19th century is a
theoretically, theoretically universal conscription including all social sectors.
It is a conscription and obligated that is
legitimated by a common membership in a nation state.
This isn't, although some might talk of conscription as slavery, and certainly
we see these references in the nineteenth and the twentieth century, modern
conscription takes more a form of an obligation of a citizen to
a state, rather than a burden that a state imposes on a few.
Now, the citizen-soldier has played a huge
role in the self-definition of Western civilization.
Contrast for example, the despotism of the East as portrayed in the Greek Classics.
Again, with all sorts or Orientalist tendencies.
The East with it's slave armies and
contrast that with the fallance of Greek complex.
To the extent that these are exaggerations and of
course there are, nevertheless they reflect a certain belief.
They reflect a certain importance that Western societies
have given to this notion of a citizen-soldier.
Now of course, this tradition has been breached more often than honored
over the past 2000 years, beginning for example with the imperialization of
the Roman Republic, fighting in the army came to be seen as
a job for professionals, and not very well respected ones at that.
During the Middle Ages, the gulf between those who fought for honor and the
large mass who merely obeyed orders, and
who's status was not enhance by military activity.
This gulf grew, so we're not talking about
a constant relationship between participation
in the society and participation to
the military, but we can see some rough trends beginning at,
at very heart of, at the beginning of classic Western civilization.
With again, these interruptions during the late Roman
Empire, and certainly during the Middle Ages.
During this period, the common foot soldier was not seen
as particularly commendable, nor did his service earn him special privileges.
Although, in some societies, the myth of the common soldier.
For example, the myth, or the legend, or the reality, to a certain extent, of the
English yeoman, and his role in fighting the French.
You're beginning to see the new formulation of
this notion of the average person participating on the military.
But nevertheless, usually these people were just daint.
To be liable for conscription, was a good index of once inability to avoid it.
That is, if you were in the military, it was because you couldn't get out of it.
Even if you have been more support for a
wider, popular participation in the military, the medieval state did
not have the capacity to identify, to train, to
transport, or even use a large part of its population.
We have to remember that conscription requires a social system.
That it's able to support it, and encourage it, and
maintain it, and the medieval state simply did not have that.
It was an indication of this, was the relationship between,
the state and the continued use of mercenaries well into the 18th Century.
That it was much easier, and perhaps even cheaper to buy
armies, to rent armies, in a sense, rather than to organize local forces.
This gives an indication I would argue of the relative weakness of the state.
And as we have seen previously, the relative weakness of the
association of a people with the nation and with the state.
Now, beginning in the 16th Century, armies begin to
require greater imposition of the state on their societies.
We've seen this process, we've talked about it.
Sweden was arguably the first country to organize in the modern era, to
organize a permanent army on the basis of military obligation back in 1544.
Now, after the 17th Century, European states did begin
to expect that their subjects had an obligation to serve in some vague form.
So you get this notion of that there is this obligation, not just as burden,
of a slavery or over a sub-altering class,
but actually an obligation of all persons to serve.
You begin to see the germs of this, okay?
Now, the Prussian state climb to a minor power status in
the 18th Century on the basis of type of compulsory service.
Here is a small, very, very poor state, and
through the imposition of this kind of military organization,
through the imposition of this compulsory service, It is
able to climb up the lead ranks, in a sense.
Now, let's not forget that resistance to conscription was practically uniform.
To be in the military, to be in the navy,
still meant that one was part of the rural poor,
or one was part of an urban underclass that
could be captured and placed on a ship.
it was widely perceived that the military must
inevitably consist of the scum of the people and all of
those for whom society has no use, and here I'm quoting
the views of the Duke of Wellington.
That is, that the military was not a reflection
of some kind of glory, what the military was, was
a sign that one could not avoid it at
least on the lower levels.
Nevertheless, we begin to see this relationship between a state, between
a territory, between a political identity, and a kind of service.
Nevertheless, generals may have been exalted, all right?
And if we look at the, the statuary, the monuments of this period, what do we see?
We see the celebration of leadership.
But one has to look very, very far to find an
ode to the common soldier, let's say, of Marlborough, or of Federate.
The people who are celebrated, it retains that Medieval aspect in a sense
that only the nobility, the leadership, is
celebrated, not those on the bottom.
So before they were nations in arms in a sense,
such forces were more likely to be considered armed hordes.
Brutal discipline, not nationalist devotion,
kept the troops literally in line.
But again, that germ has been established.
That relationship between the population, that idea that the military must
reflect the society, and not simply be purchased on the outside.
That has been born.
Now, the French Revolution in the Napoleonic Wars provided a
very strong threat that required the radical rebalancing of military forces.
That is, that the French Revolution introduces
a new factor that requires a reformulation of
this kind of relationship, and a set
of expectations of the military and other citizenship.
The French General Assembly, when debating the
policies through which it would reform the army
after the revolution was aware of
the costs and benefits associated with universal conscription.
And if we see the debates, we understand
the fears that some had about arming the populace.
We have some, expectations of low service.
We have those who protest against the forcing
of people to in the military.
We have all the discussions that we're going to be
seeing throughout the nineteenth and the and the twentieth, century.
Where before, however, the notions of soldier and citizen were seen as
diametrically opposed, the revolution and it's
radicalization after 1791 bridges these two identities.
Where before you had this sense of the soldier
as part of the society, now you are bridging
that and you are not only making that soldier
a citizen, but you're making that citizen a soldier.
The LevĂŠe en masse in 1793 was inspired in part by external threat.
The revolution sees itself threatened.
It can no longer rely, in a sense, on the royalist, military.
But, so, therefore, it has to mobilize the population.
It has to, in a sense, go after the one resource that it has.
That is this population that is willing to serve in this new way.
This represented a radical rupture, with the past.
In that it called for a people, a notion that would have been alien
in a sense to the 17th Century, to defend their newly acquired status and citizen.
It says you, you the citizen, you the
people have abolished this monarchy, you have destroyed
these kinds of chains, now it's up to you to preserve and to defend that status.
It is now your obligation, in a sense,
to pay for your freedom potentially with your blood.
The important break here was neither
technical nor strategic, this is why theories
of military history that focused too much on the technical get it wrong.
But it had to do much more with their relationship between state and society.
The state, in a sense, shifted from possession
of a few, and we can see this again
precisely in the creation of the
United States to representing the aspiration of the many.
Obviously, not everyone as certainly the history of the
United States in the 18th and 19th Century can reflect.
But at least this theoretical, theoretical notion of all inclusion, that the state,
in a sense, represents the population, or at least part of the population.
Moreover, the state then has the right and obligation to call
on these people to defend their property, to defend their freedom.
The state has provided this freedom, the state is the
mechanism for this freedom, therefore it has a right to
ask those who participate in that freedom to make this
sacrifice and to be able to assist in its defense.
Now again, let's not exaggerate the extent to which this redefinition
mirrored an authentic and enthusiastic public response, all right?
Few human beings whether the midst of the
French Revolution, or the American Revolution or in
the 19th Century, few human beings long to
put themselves in mortal danger, no matter the cause.
So we're not, we don't have to
think of this as some massive psychological revolution
on the part of people now willing to
do something they had not been willing before.
But at a context in which that relationship between
the people, the military, and the state, can be renegotiated.
The important change is that war stopped being a
game of kings and became the business of the people.
The people appropriate control of war,
and they do so by again establishing their responsibility.
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