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Why Humans Fight: The Social Dynamics of Close-Range Violence
Event Date: April 6, 2023 - 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Location: FSS 4006
Presented by CIPS and the International Theory Network (ITN)
Malešević offers a novel sociological answer to the age-old question: ‘Why do humans fight?’. Instead of focusing on the motivations of solitary individuals, he emphasises the centrality of the social and historical contexts that make fighting possible. He argues that fighting is not an individual attribute, but a social phenomenon shaped by one’s relationships with other people. Drawing on recent scholarship across a variety of academic disciplines as well as his own interviews with the former combatants, Malešević shows that one’s willingness to fight is a contextual phenomenon shaped by specific ideological and organisational logic. This book explores the role biology, psychology, economics, ideology, and coercion play in one’s experience of fighting, emphasising the cultural and historical variability of combativeness. By drawing from numerous historical and contemporary examples from all over the world, Malešević demonstrates how social pugnacity is a relational and contextual phenomenon that possesses autonomous features.
This in-person event will take place in English.
Speaker:
Siniša Malešević is a Full Professor/Chair of Sociology at the University College, Dublin. He is an elected member of Royal Irish Academy and Academia Europaea (the European Academy) and an elected Associated Member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is also a Senior Fellow and Associate Researcher, at CNAM, Paris, France. Previously he held research and teaching appointments at the Institute for International Relations (Zagreb), the Centre for the Study of Nationalism, CEU (Prague), NUI, Galway, the London School of Economics, the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna), Université Libre de Bruxelles (Visiting Professor/Eric Remacle Chair in Conflict and Peace Studies), Uppsala University and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Amsterdam.
His recent books include Why Humans Fight: The Social Dynamics of Close-Range Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Contemporary Sociological Theory (Sage, 2021) and Classical Sociological Theory (Sage, 2021) both with S. Loyal, Grounded Nationalisms: A Sociological Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 2019, runner up/honorable mention in the 2020 Stein Rokkan book award), The Rise of Organised Brutality: A Historical Sociology of Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2017, American Sociological Association PWSC outstanding book award 2018), Nation-States and Nationalisms: Organisation, Ideology and Solidarity (Polity 2013) and The Sociology of War and Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2010). He has also authored over 120 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and 9 edited volumes. His work has been translated into 13 languages.
Moderator:
Srdjan Vučetić is Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. His research interests involve American and Canadian foreign and defence policy and international security. Prior to joining the GSPIA, Srdjan was the Randall Dillard Research Fellow in International Studies at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.