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'Primitive War':2nd TiltWarren Sproule (Warren.Sproule@SOCIOL.UTAS.EDU.AU)Fri, 7 Oct 1994 10:04:30 +0200
surprise at finding the many prompt,insightful and informative replies generated by the initial query. It seems to have struck a resonant chord (a personal thanks to Cameron Laird for his kind and encouraging remarks), so in response to requests by Rob Quinlan and Moira Killoran I'll beg the list's indulgence with another posting on this issue... I'm in two minds regarding Mike Salovesh's definition of war as 'organized intergroup violence WITH A PARTICULAR KIND OF PURPOSE - control of territory, or control over a population, or control of (scarce?) resources'. I agree that war is both a purposive and an organized activity. That some such definition would, as Scott Holmes notes, attract a fair degree of support amongst social scientists is unsurprising, and I'm both appreciative of Mike's acknowledgement of a hidden agenda underpinning his definition and *sympatico* with the moral stance he takes on the issue. My difficulty in wholeheartedly embracing Mike's definition hinges on his notion of 'control'. To characterise "war" as an exercise in 'control' valorises rationality, and strikes me as decidedly shaky for a couple of reasons: [a] the inherent unpredictability of war, still probably best encapsulated in Clausewitzian concepts of 'fog' and 'friction', and his concomitant contempt for analysts of war like von Bulow or Jomini ('scribblers of systems and compendia') who posited war as susceptible to perfect control. Still in the realms of classical military theory, I read Sun-Tzu's insistence on surprise and speed as 'the essence of warfare' as an attempt to capitalise on this very unpredictability. Negatively expressed, my hunch is also that the massive military investment in control at all levels, from the individual to the global, is testimony to the fundamental *uncontrollability* of mass conflict: Hence the consistent military commitment to 'hi-tech' weapons systems progressively geared, in Manuel De Landa's assessment, to 'taking humans (ie, human *error*) out of the loop') . Wedded to this, [b] territorial expansion, subject populations and enhancement of resources are typical outcomes (effects) of war. This is resolved at the cessation of hostilities. Is this sufficient to place them in the category of *causal* factors? Under such a view, stripped to its essentials, "plunder" constitutes the sole motive for warfare. I'd be willing to concede that SOME wars are so motivated, but even this is problematic when we get down to cases. What's more troublesome is that this knocks so many other motivations - from the 'Just War' to the 'Cold War' - out of left field. It gets especially slippery in light of the fact that the loser's motives ("warmongering") are always retrospectively ascribed by the ("peaceloving") winners, and that so few leaders justify entry into war on the basis of appeals to plunder. This is particularly true in cases where populations must be persuaded, not coerced, into contributing to a war effort: How often, eg, have official rationales for US military involvements been predicated on "payoffs" in the form of acquisition of land, slaves, or goods and services? The Marxist solution to this - dominant ideology/false consciousness - doesn't convince me on a number of grounds. In the context of this discussion, suffice to say that I regard the polity as central to warfare - Tilly's pithy phrase, that 'war made the state, and the state made war', is apt here - and I can't square that notion with the polity as epiphenomenal (superstructural). Nor do I think, though I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, that the forces determining a mode of *production* are quite so readily transferrable to a mode of *destruction*. [c] Dana Bonstrom's posting [10/4/94] puts me on the horns of a dilemma. If my objections to Mike's definition claim that it's too concerned with control over *concrete* phenomena at the expense of all other motivations, Dana's account of the Dani "weem" as triggered by 'avenging the ghosts of those killed in previous battles' brings elements of a non-corporeal motivation into the picture. But on the face of it, it also disrupts my general position of 'no such thing as "primitive war" '. In defence of this latter claim, here's one straight from the hip: The notion of war as at least partly 'avenging the ghosts of those killed in previous battles' is a characteristic of NON-hunter/gatherer groups, and is nowhere more evident than in modernity. In a general sense this rests on Comte's aphorism, that society is composed of more dead than living members. More germane to the present topic, it has to do with the justification of present wars being built on the sacrifice of the dead in previous wars. This takes various forms: Contemporary (western) examples would encompass expeditionary forces in the Falklands 'imbued' with the martial spirit of the English at Agincourt, Waterloo and the London of the Blitz; Lyndon Johnson's claim at the height of the Viet Nam War that American withdrawal would constitute a 'betrayal' of the US troops already killed in that engagement; Australian soldiers preserving the 'legacy' of ANZACs slaughtered at Gallipoli in 1915, etc. As well as relating to Hobsbawm & Ranger's 'invented traditions' or Benedict Anderson's 'imagined communities', this encompasses an entire range of peculiarly modern variants on the themes of commemoration and martyrdom as they relate to war in the modern world - a (half-baked and eminently shoot-downable!) thread I'd like to pursue if the interest is there... [d] Nomads. I take on board Scott Holmes' point about the Golden Hordes [10/4/94] with some reservations: Firstly, that one of the things that always struck me about the Mongol invasions was their inability (or perhaps disinclination?) to form an empire subsequent to military victory - as I recall (tho' this isn't really my field) they were 'absorbed' into "mainstream" Chinese culture within 2 generations; Secondly, the confederation forged by Genghiz Khan doesn't exactly tally with my notion (and it's admittedly still a notion) of a 'primitive warring' configuration - I don't quite know *where* they slot into this debate - maybe Scott's right in that they're exceptional (a "predatory" culture type) - Deleuze & Guattari, following Clastres, maintain a distinction between a 'nomad war machine' and a 'state apparatus' which kicks into this whole issue in a way that I haven't come to grips with yet (I'd be grateful for any illumination here!); Thirdly, I'm a tad worried about Scott's suggestion of consigning an analytical distinction between "war" and other forms of corporate violence to the realm of 'squabbling over semantics' on the basis that such a distinction 'would be lost on the victims' - I'd hope (naively maybe) that attempting such a distinction would perhaps go some way towards initially isolating and eventually preventing a phenomenon ("war") geared specifically to piling up more victims; and finally, on the other wing of this strand [writing] I'm not sure which of the pre-Sumerian cities Scott refers to, so I'll wait for more details (also the types of evidence that they engaged in 'warfare') before replying. Enough! or too much, I've rambled on at inordinate length here (as well as fudging on supplying a definition of "war", 'primitive' or otherwise!). If the interst continues I'll attempt something of the sort in a later posting. Might I suggest that if this thread IS to continue, to avoid alienating uninterested parties and in the interests of those (unlike myself) whose access to the Internet isn't subsidised by their Universities, that this thread is preceded by a code (say, PW) in the header - or should this discussion just continue back-channel? Thanks for your patience and guidance to this point... Ti Sero Lo Mano, WS.
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