NOW AVAILABLE: Special Issue of the PEACE REVIEW on the
PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF WAR

The Special Issue of the PEACE REVIEW (published by Taylor and Francis) is now available. Based on over 150 proposals received, eleven articles were accepted for publication. These essays represent the cutting edge of contemporary thought on the psychology of warfare. A LIMITED NUMBER OF COPIES OF THIS SPECIAL ISSUE NOW ARE AVAILABLE

For information on how to obtain a copy of the Special Issue on the PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF WAR, please CLICK HERE.

Articles included in this special issue are listed below. We also have provided below brief excerpts that convey the excitement of this special issue.

ARTICLES INCLUDE:

SACRIFICE, TRANSCENDENCE AND THE SOLDIER, Babak Rahimi, Assistant Professor of Iranian and Islamic Studies at the University of California at San Diego.

GROUP PSYCHOLOGY, SACRIFICE AND WAR, Norman Steinhart, M.D., Research Fellow at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, Canada

WAR AND THE RELIGIOUS WILL TO SACRIFICE, Patrick Porter, Tutor in Modern History at the University of Oxford

MEMORIALIZATION AND THE SELLING OF WAR, Deborah D. Buffton, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse

THE MYTHOLOGY OF WAR, Dr. Andrew Robinson, Political theorist, University of Nottingham

THE MANIC ECSTASY OF WAR, Wendy C. Hamblet, Professor of Philosophy, Adelphi University, New York

HUMILIATION AND THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR, Paul Saurette, Assistant Professor School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada

DOMINANCE AND SUBMISSION IN POSTMODERN WAR IMAGERY, Myra Mendible, Associate Professor of American Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University

GUILT AND SACRIFICE IN U.S. WARFARE, Carl Mirra, American Studies at SUNY College, Old Westbury

MALE GENDER INSTABILITY AND WAR, Jeannette Marie Mageo, Professor of Anthropology, Washington State University

COMBAT MOTIVATION, Johan M.G. van der Dennen, senior researcher on war and peace at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands

For information on how to obtain a copy of the Special Issue on the PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF WAR, please CLICK HERE.

For further information please contact Orion Anderson at (718) 393-1104 or send an email to oanderson@ideologiesofwar.com

EXCERPTS FROM THE ARTICLES:

Buffton: War is so closely connected with the identity of nations that participation in war is a necessary action to show one's devotion to the country; a society cannot consider itself "alive" if its citizens are not willing to die for it. Fighting and dying for one's country become the means through which a society is "resurrected." We see this message of war resurrecting society in war memorials. One of the most influential sculptors of war memorials in post World War I France created monuments in which we see a peasant woman at the grave of a soldier marked by a cross and a helmet, but sprouting from the grave come abundant sheaves of wheat. The message is that the blood of the dead soldiers brings forth new life to reinvigorate the country.

Saurette: Once we understand 9/11 as fundamentally humiliating - and not just threatening - the United States, we can make better sense of the elements of the global war on terror. A legal approach would never have been accepted by the administration, even if international laws were reliable and effective enough to pursue al-Qaeda. Why? Although courts promise to provide justice, they rarely explicitly deliver vengeance and counter-humiliation. Criminal prosecution may provide restitution, but it could not deliver the larger goal of counter-humiliating al-Qaeda and thus publicly re-establishing global respect for America.

Mendible: Humiliation is one of the techniques through which institutions and nations construct docile and disciplined bodies. Military institutions inscribe the value of discipline and control on the soldier's body and psyche. Phillip Caputo describes the demeaning aspects of his US marine training. The rigorous and often painful physical trials, the drill sergeant hollering insults, separated those worthy of the warrior's honor from the "unsats"-the ones that carried "the virus of weakness." In forging a marine corps-a military body defined by strength and hardness, the soldier extirpates any trace of the feminine. Discipline begins with self-abnegation; absolute surrender to the authority of the stern father figure who punishes and rewards.

Rahimi: The soldier's experience in believing that he is dying for something greater than himself, for something that will outlast his individual, perishable life in place of a greater, eternal vitality (embodied in the national or a religious identity) is crucial for the ideological justification of war.

For information on how to obtain a copy of the Special Issue on the PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF WAR, please CLICK HERE.

Steinhart: Willingness to offer up one's life to one's nation is perhaps even more essential in war than fear and hatred of the enemy. It is because everyone must contribute to the larger good that 'enemies' must be destroyed or at least subdued, for many of these 'enemies' do not appear to citizens as a threats in their daily lives or cause them harm directly.

Robinson: The people who engage in and support wars, or any other kind of social action, are motivated by a conception of the world, i.e. a set of conscious or unconscious beliefs and assumptions which make their course of action seem justified, necessary or desirable. Wars commence in the culture first of all and we kill each other in euphemisms and abstractions long before the first missiles have been launched'.

Hamblet: Wars confirm the values, virtues and meanings of one's own cultural group. Sacred symbols-flags, national anthems, tales of past heroes, fallen ancestors-are put to work in luring the best of the nation-its strong and courageous youths-to the extreme patriotism required to maintain order.

Mirra: In war, the good and bad selves are divided or split; the good is retained for the self and the bad is exported or projected on to others. Since the other subsumes these violent traits, it is seen as demonic and worthy of annihilation. Individuals or nation-states that cause others to suffer must somehow release themselves from the torment of guilt. The easiest way to circumvent guilt is to cast one's enemies as inhumane, wholly deserving of violent treatment.

van der Dennen: Despite the social legitimization of violence provided by military institutions, the repugnance and revulsion many soldiers feel toward killing is a recurring feature of the military literature. Marshall, as we have seen, claimed that army psychiatrists studying combat fatigue in the European theater had found that fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure in the individual.

For information on how to obtain a copy of the Special Issue on the PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF WAR, please CLICK HERE.