Between Civilisation and Militarisation
Alternate Wednesdays, 17.00-19.00 during term time
CRASSH, Seminar room SG2, Ground floor
Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, CB3 9DT
Convener
Dr Beatrice Jauregui (Dept of Social Anthropology/Centre of South Asian Studies)
Co-conveners
Dr Lori Allen (Department of Middle Eastern Studies)
Dr Devon Curtis (Department of Politics and International Studies-POLIS)
Dr Iginio Gagliardone (Media and Communication Studies, Centre of Governance and Human Rights)
Dr Adam Higazi (Centre of African Studies)
Dr Emma Hunter (Faculty of History)
Dr Humeira Iqtidar (Department of Political Economy, King's College London)
Dr Jean Khalfa (Department of French)
Dr Isaac Nakhimovsky (Faculty of History)
Dr Dacia Viejo Rose (Cultural Heritage and the Reconstruction of Identities After Conflict project, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research)
Dr Lee Wilson (Department of Social Anthropology)
This research group explores historical concepts and global dynamics
of "civilisation" and "militarisation" in relation to democratic
governance. Conventional understandings of these terms by both
scholars and policy makers/practitioners have long imagined and
naturalised a neat divide between the spheres of "the civil" and "the
military", often marking the former as the "rule of law" and the
latter as the "fog of war". However, considering these concepts
historically, ethnographically and philosphically, it is notable that
conflations and recombinations of civil and military forms of order
and security have been a continual social fact across time and space.
This has been the case since security forces began to be organised,
especially in the West and Western-influenced regions that were often,
though not necessarily, colonised. Whether contemplating classical
Greek and Roman texts, Renaissance philosophies of state authority,
colonial military "reformist" writings, the history and sociology of
"virtue" and "manners", or Foucault's inversion of the famed
Clausewitzian axiom to say "politics is the continuation of war by
other means", one notes a continual tug of war between the
foregrounding of either civil or military forms of order and
authority, which belies a clear and incontrovertible distinction
between these forms.
Proceeding on the assumption that the line between civilised and
militarised spheres is not merely murky, but also manipulable, this
group aims to address broad questions spanning the humanities and
social sciences, such as: What does it mean to define a particular
form of sociality as "civil" or "military"? Who decides on such
categories, by what means and toward what ends? How are such
definitions and decisions co-configured with changing concepts of law
and war, security and order, and democracy itself?
Themes:
MIchaelmas Term 2011: The imagined distinction between civil and military spheres.
Lent Term 2012: Humanitarian Interventions in Conflict and War
Administrative contact: Esther Lamb (Grad/Fac Programme Manager)
