Aims
This course is a comprehensive introduction to war in the modern world, encompassing its political, social, economic and cultural dimensions. It adopts a `war and society? approach in that it is concerned with the ways in which social relations shape the nature and conduct of war and, in turn, with the ways in which wars shape the societies engaged in it. It places war in the context of an historically evolving international system, which both shapes the nature of war, and is itself remade by war.

Accordingly, attention is paid to the changing nature of modern war in both the core and periphery of the international system, and to the role of warfare in processes of global social change. `Modernity? is addressed in terms of the dynamic application of instrumental reason to the means of warfare; the role of ideology in shaping war, and of war in shaping ideology; the impact of the advent of mass society upon war, and of war upon it; as well as in terms of the changes in war wrought by industrial capitalism, and of the impact of war on state organisation of the economy. Finally, attention is paid to the cultural dimensions of the social organisation of violence, in particular to the role of violence in creating social solidarity and to change and continuity in the social basis of soldiers? `will to combat.?

Objectives
By the end of the module students will be familiar with the following topics:

• War, Society and the International System
• The Industrialisation and Totalisation of Modern Conventional Warfare
• Nuclear Weapons and the National Security State: The Cold War in the Core
• People?s War: The Cold War in the Periphery
• Culture and the Social Organisation of Violence

10 ECTS Credits