Module Identifier IP31420  
Module Title WAR AND MODERN SOCIETY IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE  
Academic Year 2001/2002  
Co-ordinator Mr Tarak Barkawi  
Semester Intended for use in future years  
Next year offered N/A  
Next semester offered N/A  
Course delivery Lecture   16 Hours 16 x 1 hour Lectures  
  Seminar   8 Hours 8 x 1 hour Seminars  
Assessment Essay   1 x 2,000 word essay   30%  
  Exam   2 Hours   70%  

Objectives


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


10 ECTS Credits

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.?

Reading Lists

Books
** Recommended Text
William H McNeill. The Pursuit of Power.
Michael Howard. Clausewitz.