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Author: Azar Gat
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199236631
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 839
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Book Description
Why do people go to war? Is it rooted in human nature or is it a late cultural invention? And what of war today: is it a declining phenomenon or simply changing its shape? This book sets out to find definitive answers to these questions in an attempt to unravel the riddle of war throughout human history.
Author: Azar Gat
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199236631
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 839
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Book Description
Why do people go to war? Is it rooted in human nature or is it a late cultural invention? And what of war today: is it a declining phenomenon or simply changing its shape? This book sets out to find definitive answers to these questions in an attempt to unravel the riddle of war throughout human history.
Author: Lawrence H. Keeley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199880700
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
The myth of the peace-loving "noble savage" is persistent and pernicious. Indeed, for the last fifty years, most popular and scholarly works have agreed that prehistoric warfare was rare, harmless, unimportant, and, like smallpox, a disease of civilized societies alone. Prehistoric warfare, according to this view, was little more than a ritualized game, where casualties were limited and the effects of aggression relatively mild. Lawrence Keeley's groundbreaking War Before Civilization offers a devastating rebuttal to such comfortable myths and debunks the notion that warfare was introduced to primitive societies through contact with civilization (an idea he denounces as "the pacification of the past"). Building on much fascinating archeological and historical research and offering an astute comparison of warfare in civilized and prehistoric societies, from modern European states to the Plains Indians of North America, War Before Civilization convincingly demonstrates that prehistoric warfare was in fact more deadly, more frequent, and more ruthless than modern war. To support this point, Keeley provides a wide-ranging look at warfare and brutality in the prehistoric world. He reveals, for instance, that prehistorical tactics favoring raids and ambushes, as opposed to formal battles, often yielded a high death-rate; that adult males falling into the hands of their enemies were almost universally killed; and that surprise raids seldom spared even women and children. Keeley cites evidence of ancient massacres in many areas of the world, including the discovery in South Dakota of a prehistoric mass grave containing the remains of over 500 scalped and mutilated men, women, and children (a slaughter that took place a century and a half before the arrival of Columbus). In addition, Keeley surveys the prevalence of looting, destruction, and trophy-taking in all kinds of warfare and again finds little moral distinction between ancient warriors and civilized armies. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, he examines the evidence of cannibalism among some preliterate peoples. Keeley is a seasoned writer and his book is packed with vivid, eye-opening details (for instance, that the homicide rate of prehistoric Illinois villagers may have exceeded that of the modern United States by some 70 times). But he also goes beyond grisly facts to address the larger moral and philosophical issues raised by his work. What are the causes of war? Are human beings inherently violent? How can we ensure peace in our own time? Challenging some of our most dearly held beliefs, Keeley's conclusions are bound to stir controversy.
Author: Andrew Linklater
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316660109
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1006
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Book Description
Andrew Linklater's The Problem of Harm in World Politics (Cambridge, 2011) created a new agenda for the sociology of states-systems. Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems builds on the author's attempts to combine the process-sociological investigation of civilizing processes and the English School analysis of international society in a higher synthesis. Adopting Martin Wight's comparative approach to states-systems and drawing on the sociological work of Norbert Elias, Linklater asks how modern Europeans came to believe themselves to be more 'civilized' than their medieval forebears. He investigates novel combinations of violence and civilization through a broad historical scope from classical antiquity, Latin Christendom and Renaissance Italy to the post-Second World War era. This book will interest all students with an interdisciplinary commitment to investigating long-term patterns of change in world politics.
Author: Roderick Campbell
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1782976213
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
This collection of essays begins with the premise that violence, in its relationship to order, is a central element of history. Taking a broad definition of violence, including structural and symbolic violence, the contributions move beyond the problematic of civilization’s mitigating or foundational role, instead seeing violence as inherently social, and, perhaps, socially inherent (if variable). The question then becomes what forms of harm are authorized or banned in which social orders and how they change over time. Beginning with a theoretical introduction, this interdisciplinary volume includes seven papers representing cultural anthropology, history, archaeology and international relations. The papers range from China to the Americas and from the 2nd millennium BCE to the 21st century CE. Some deal with long-term developments while others focus on a single time and place. Many treat the issue of the visibility/invisibility of violence, while all in one way or another deal with the role of violence in the re-production of community. Together, the volume aims to paint, with a few strokes, the outlines of a deep historical anthropology of social violence. The volume is based on the proceedings of a symposium hosted at Brown University.
Author: B. Bowden
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1782545727
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
'Civilization and War is an exceptionally erudite and timely meditation on the close relationship between civilization, progress and war in modern political thought and policy from the Enlightenment to the war on terror. It is a fitting complement to Dr. Bowden's path-breaking study, The Empire of Civilization (2009).' James Tully, University of Victoria, Canada 'Civilization and War addresses a concern of all thinking persons in elegant language with erudition to match. Bowden's readers will profit by stretching their minds, learn much to mull over and discuss with their friends.' William H. McNeill, University of Chicago, US 'A lucid, wide-ranging and fascinating discussion of how "civilization" has given rise to ideals of peace and progress and is perhaps inescapably prone to technologically-advanced, destructive warfare.' Andrew Linklater, Aberystwyth University, UK 'Following his award-winning The Empire of Civilization, Brett Bowden's Civilization and War is a much-needed corrective to Kantian hopes for cosmopolitan governance. Short as it may be, this is an eminently readable book that rightfully poses uncomfortable questions with regard to the inextricable link between "civilization" and "barbarism." It is also a reminder, however, to political realists to take the ethical questions of armed conflict more seriously. Such violence is overcome less by normative moral frameworks than by the actual practices of migration and cooperation as much as by exchanges of goods and ideas.' Christian Emden, Rice University, US Civilization and war were born around the same time in roughly the same place they have effectively grown up together. This challenges the belief that the more civilized we become, the less likely the resort to war in order to resolve differences and disputes. The related assumption that civilized societies are more likely to abide by the rules of war is also in dispute. Where does terrorism fit into debates about civilized and savage war? What are we to make of talk about an impending 'clash of civilizations'? In a succinct yet wide ranging survey of history and of ideas that calls in to question a number of conventional wisdoms, Civilization and War explores these issues and more whilst outlining the two-way relationship between civilization and war. Providing an alternative perspective to conventional thinking, this book will appeal to a wide interdisciplinary audience across all regions of the globe. The material is both original and highly topical and is written in a sharp, snappy style that makes it accessible to a wide readership, including upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, academic specialists and informed general readers. Civilization and War makes important contributions to the fields of international relations, peace and conflict studies, political theory and the history of ideas, and will be of interest to people with a curiosity about world history and current affairs.
Author: Jonathan Fletcher
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745666280
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
This book provides an introduction to the work of Norbert Elias. It is the first systematic appraisal of two central themes of his thought - violence and civilization. Although Elias is best known for his theory of civilizing processes, this study highlights the crucial importance of the concept of decivilizing processes. Fletcher argues that while Elias did not develop a theory of decivilizing processes, such a theory is logically implied in his perspective and is highly pertinent to an understanding of the most violent episodes of twentieth-century history, such as the Nazi genocides. Elias's original synthesis of sociology and psychology is examined through an analysis of several key texts including The Civilizing Process, The Established and the Outsiders and The Germans. Fletcher shows how Elias constructs his "figurational models" and applies these comparatively to specific historical examples drawn from England and Germany. Violence and Civilization is an excellent introduction to Elias's work. It will appeal to students of sociology, anthropology, and history interested in understanding the phenomenon of violence in the modern world.
Author: Imbesat Daudi MD, PhD, FACS
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1493120247
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 437
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Book Description
Is Islamic civilization violent? Many in the West believe that Islam and Muslims are indeed violent. In the Muslim world, this question itself implies Western prejudice. The answer can only be achieved by comparing various parameters of the violence of “civilizations”. In this book, violent conflicts of various “civilizations” of the last two centuries have been quantified, compared and analyzed through well-established scientific principles and presented in layman's terms.
Author: Eric Arthur Johnson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252065460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
Along with most of the rest of Western culture, has crime itself become more "civilized"? This book exposes as myths the beliefs that society has become more violent than it has been in the past and that violence is more likely to occur in cities than in rural areas. The product of years of study by scholars from North America and Europe, The Civilization of Crime shows that, however violent some large cities may be now, both rural and urban communities in Sweden, Holland, England, and other countries were far more violent during the late Middle Ages than any cities are today. Contributors show that the dramatic change is due, in part, to the fact that violence was often tolerated or even accepted as a form of dispute settlement in village-dominated premodern society. Interpersonal violence declined in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as dispute resolution was taken over by courts and other state institutions and the church became increasingly intolerant of it. The book also challenges a number of other historical-sociological theories, among them that contemporary organized crime is new, and addresses continuing debate about the meaning and usefulness of crime statistics. CONTRIBUTORS: Esther Cohen, Herman Diederiks, Florike Egmond, Eric A. Johnson, Michele Mancino, Eric H. Monkkonen, Eva Österberg, James A. Sharpe, Pieter Spierenburg, Jan Sundin, Barbara Weinberger
Author: Ian Morris
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374286000
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 513
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Book Description
Introduction: Friend to the undertaker. - The wasteland? : war and peace in ancient Rome. - The barbarians strike back : the counterproductive way of war, A.D. 1-1415. - The five hundred years' war : Europe (almost) conquers the world, 1415-1914. - Storm of steel : the war for Europe, 1914-1980s. - Red in tooth and claw : why the chimps of Gombe went to war. - The last best hope of Earth : American empire, 1989-?
Author: Samuel P. Huntington
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416561242
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 553
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Book Description
The classic study of post-Cold War international relations, more relevant than ever in the post-9/11 world, with a new foreword by Zbigniew Brzezinski. Since its initial publication, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has become a classic work of international relations and one of the most influential books ever written about foreign affairs. An insightful and powerful analysis of the forces driving global politics, it is as indispensable to our understanding of American foreign policy today as the day it was published. As former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski says in his new foreword to the book, it “has earned a place on the shelf of only about a dozen or so truly enduring works that provide the quintessential insights necessary for a broad understanding of world affairs in our time.” Samuel Huntington explains how clashes between civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace but also how an international order based on civilizations is the best safeguard against war. Events since the publication of the book have proved the wisdom of that analysis. The 9/11 attacks and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated the threat of civilizations but have also shown how vital international cross-civilization cooperation is to restoring peace. As ideological distinctions among nations have been replaced by cultural differences, world politics has been reconfigured. Across the globe, new conflicts—and new cooperation—have replaced the old order of the Cold War era. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order explains how the population explosion in Muslim countries and the economic rise of East Asia are changing global politics. These developments challenge Western dominance, promote opposition to supposedly “universal” Western ideals, and intensify intercivilization conflict over such issues as nuclear proliferation, immigration, human rights, and democracy. The Muslim population surge has led to many small wars throughout Eurasia, and the rise of China could lead to a global war of civilizations. Huntington offers a strategy for the West to preserve its unique culture and emphasizes the need for people everywhere to learn to coexist in a complex, multipolar, muliticivilizational world.
