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 II
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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
The various stages of conscription in Napoleonic
France, raise an army of one million men.
This was also unprecedented.
Now, because France, in responding to threats in the,
last part of the 18th century has to raise his army.
It is incredible successful beginning in the 1790s.
Then the rest of Europe has to meet now this threat.
And France's enemies had to respond in kind.
We certainly see that the fear of a French invasion, transformed what
we can now begin to call the British military and the state.
That is, the fear of this other.
The fear of the Frog, if you will.
Crossing the channel, and imposing its authority on the
population served as a way, as, of cohering that population.
If the army was going to grow to counter the threat.
The administrative systems have to be established to count,
to select, to coerce, to arm and transport the men.
That is, again as we saw in the previous lectures, you
see this growth of bureaucracies, you see this growth of organizational complexity,.
As a need to be able to produce a military that can be successful in battle.
Perhaps more importantly the Napoleonic scare, if you
will, transformed the English, the Welch, the Irish, and
Scotts who served by giving them a new
sense of common identity with their fellow British soldiers.
Now this does not mean that these local identities disappeared,
that the sub-national identities, or
national identity depending on your proclivity.
That they disappeared simply that the stage was created in which a supra
identity of Britain was able to be created, was able to be defended.
By showing in a sense, by showing these, these men the larger islands which existed
past the boundaries of their shires, it
granted them a new status, within that society.
We begin to see some celebration of the common soldier.
And inculcating them with the sense of loyalty to this grater hall.
Again, war and the response to it made it
possible, again using violent terms, the scum of the earth,
to make them into bricks, to make them into something
that could be honored, and something that could be celebrated.
In Europe and North America the mass army also meant the creation of engation.
Where non had arguably existed before.
That is that the army serves as a fulcrum, the army serves as,
a focal point by as which this national identity, who are we?
We are those that serve in this common military.
We are those who share this uniform.
We are those who share this legacy with our past, which defines us
as Americans, or as French, or as Britains, or whatever.
Articulation of this nation.
There are, the military as representation of the nation
is the most important aspect of the massification of war.
That is that conscription encouraged a different attitude towards the
state, one based on collective identity and a shared citizenship.
Again, let's not forget.
The state can be seen as coercive.
The state can be opposed.
Nevertheless the whole basis, the assumptions
of the relationship between citizen-soldier and
state, have been transformed to one of this kind of mutual obligation.
War and the military experience help break down provincial allegiances and
networks, and replace these with ones more centered in a national community.
So that is, [COUGH], rather than only knowing
those in your village or those in your district.
Now, you came to know through the various movement of military, through
the various transfers, you came to know a larger part of the country.
You came to associate them as similar to you,
wearing the same uniform, fighting in the same cause.
France is a critical example of this.
And in the 19th century, the military played a very important role.
Instarandizing language and symbolic repretuars words.
That is not just showing the soldiers that they have something in common
with other parts of member, of other parts of french communities.
But the very creation of what it meant to be french, the very creation of
the french language instandarization of the french language
was insisted by this process of massive transcription.
Now the 50 years following Waterloo,
saw the resolution of several technical problems
that had to be solved in order for the mass army to function properly.
So, we now have a need for this mass army, we have
an administrative context, and an ideological
context in which that mass army.
Can exist, but there are technical issues in a sense that have to be resolved.
The first one is the administrative challenge of moving and using so many men.
Again the size of the armies increases so much that
they kind of organizational practices and bureaucratic, protocols that you need.
In order to be do this smoothly, become ever more, complicated.
There's probably, the great solution for
this came from the Prussian general staffed by the early 1860's.
Allowing this administrative group, the German general staff, to,
control a new kind of armed force, a much larger kind of armed
force, a different behaving armed force that could be used productively.
Moreover, developments in the weapons used by common soldiers.
That is rifling, breech loading, made it
much more possible for people who had never
seen a firearm, people who had not been
exposed to firearms to gain some minimal training.
So, not only do we have advances in the technology of organizing this army as a
whole, but rather, we have a microtechnology that
makes it much easier to turn a common citizen.
Into in somewhat productive soldier.
Now, let's not forget that things don't change completely.
There was concern with the disciplinary of the new armies.
Theorist contempt that those were short terms of service on
a war, mass description could not be depended on the battle.
And we've seen this for example protest in the American civil war.
Where you, that idea that you can count on these soldiers
even though they're not professionals, even
though they're not totally coerced, is questionable.
There was an issue that if the military order, strict
discipline of a conscript army was not the same as its professional equivalent.
Then, you know it would not work.
However, there were those who would argue the sheer numbers and
the youthful enthusiasm of these conscript armies would actually play out.
And we see, again, this debate, about the usefulness of
a conscript mass army as opposed to a formal army.
The final obstacle for the creation of a nation at arms.
Met a more complex and demanding administrative state
apparatus to manage and fuel the new force.
Not only do you need a new kind of general staff that can can actually tactically
and strategically use these numbers, but you need
a much larger apparatuses we have seen before.
To actually produce this new kind of armies.
This meant, as we talked again before, the
states had little choice but to increase administrative efficiency.
Without the new administrative efficiency, they could
not produce the tools of their own survival.
The American Civil War gives us some indication of what was to come.
It involved massive amounts of men, very significant
percentages of the relevant population of the south,
and a little bit less of the north,
and many of these new administrative and technological innovations.
What we see of many things that we see in the American Civil War is
the coming together of these new administrative practices,
these new identities and these new technical means.
The Franco-Prussian War pitted a
professional force against a conscript army.
And this altered the balance in favor of mass armies.
That is that the Prussian ability or the German
ability to use this constrict army use this mass army.
Against a much more professionalized French force and to use it successfully
in a sense is the ultimate trial by combat if you will.
That finally these concert armies can show to be successful.
After 1870 military powers could no longer ignore this new means of war.
Even outside of Europe.
Here is in a sense a market revolution.
The market of violence.
The market of interstate war.
A new innovation has came in that could not be ignored.
The spite, the harshness of the army.
Conscription again as it was doing this it also helped create this
greater sense of national identity and we see this outside of Europe.
For example, certainly in the last 19th
century among the Egyptian Fellahin, the Egyptian military.
Serves in a sense as the birthplace of a new sense of Egyptian identity.
The army plays a critical role in the
development of Japanese nationalism following the Meiji revolution.
It is the one institution in a sense that serves
to create this new Japanese identity all along the central state.
More recently, participation in the Israeli army is an experience which has
served to crystallize young Israelis notion of their own national identity,.
And there participation in the state and we can think of many many
other examples whether it is in the 19th century in Western Europe or
North America or the 20th century and other parts of the world where
the sense of national service helps build a sense of nation.
Mass conscription resulted in a series of parallel and complimenting
processes, that help define their
relationship between people and their state.
I want to argue that conscription and citizenship could
be seen as two sides of the same coin.
That along with the compulsory education and the right to vote.
Conscription was seen as one of the pillars of the democratic state.
Thus, it was an obligation, but it also served to
cement that sense of citizenship and that sense of participation.
Again, limited to the few, most obviously men.
which of course helps explain in a sense the power of that male monopoly.
Over the vote and the power of the male monopoly over violence.
These two in a sense can be seen as wedded.
Moreover, on the one hand, the state came
to demand more from the population than passive obedience.
That is the state comes to expect more from a population.
That simply quiet.
It expects some kind of participation.
The population on the other hand, comes to see themselves in the state
and to demand more from it as a recompense for their ultimate sacrifice.
So, we have this bargaining in a sense.
What we have here is what Max Weber called a political exchange.
Here I am quoting from him.
Considered in purely mechanistic terms, the
state needed unobstructed access to the citizen.
In turn, to gain the citizen's willingness to work and to
fight for the state, the individual had to be offered political power.
Or, if that was impossible, new psychological inducements and social
opportunities to enable him to reach his full potential. That is citizenship,
nationalism, democracy, are all linked, in a sense, in this political exchange.
An exchange for the right, or the duty, to participate in war.
Citizens were rewarded with a greater rights and more welfare services.
The vote and military services were corollaries.
What Willie McNeil says, that military service is the
ball and chain attached to political and social privilege.
That military discipline met the triumph of democracy because
the community wished, and was compelled to secure the
cooperation of the non-aristocratic masses, and hence put arms,
and along with arms, political power, into their hands.
What we have here is a transfer of control
over the means of violence from a privileged warrior elite.
From a privileged nobility, from an autocratic state, to the very
members of that state, to the very members of that society.
And what we're talking about here is democracy in all it's terms.
The three aspects of democracy, as described by T.H. Marshall.
Civic rights, electoral rights, Social rights, the rights
of the individual, the rights to participate in
political decision-making, the rights for some welfare benefits,
all these are linked to participation in wars.
And now the two world wars are the culmination
of this, and they created this pattern of universal service.
There were some prominent exceptions.
For example the United States and the United Kingdom at different periods in
the 20th century, but this notion of
universal service, this notion of political exchange.
Defined in a sense a large part of the 20th century well into the 1970's.
And we're going to talk a little bit more about what the consequences of that
political
exchange were.
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