XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

315

War, the Military and Societal Transformation

RC16 Sociological Theory (host committee)

Language: English

This session invites papers that address the theorizing of war,the military and societal transformations. While war and the military have been largely peripheral to the ways in which sociologists have comprehended post-industrial social change,there are green shoots of interest in the area as scholars attempt to assess the influence on civil society by emergent forms of warfare, changes in modes of organised violence and new modes of militarization. This includes transformations in the constitution of the military, generational shifts in attitudes towards organised violence and military service, a new memory politics of past conflicts, an increasing use of the military for ‘humanitarian’ interventions in international conflict, the growth of terrorist acts and fighting by non-state actors in international hostilities, the civilian impacts of the ongoing War on Terror, attempts within the armed forces to redress entrenched discrimination practices within their own ranks, and the emergence of new technologically-mediated modes of warfare. This session encourages contributors to consider these and related topics in programmatic ways that have the potential to provide direction to the sociological theorizing of the relationship between armed conflict, violence and civil society.