Cette session – simple ou double selon l'affluence et la qualité des abstracts proposés – invite des socio-historiens, sociologues ou historiens qui interrogent les pratiques guerrières en termes proxémiques et de transformation du rapport au corps à présenter l'état de leurs réflexions et recherches théorico-empiriques. Les abstracts peuvent porter sur des cas d'étude issus de l'époque médiévale jusqu'au siècle passé, véritable laboratoire de violences de masse, de même qu'elles peuvent bien sûr avoir trait aux guerres ayant cours aujourd'hui. La session aura lieu dans le cadre du prochain congrès mondial de sociologie qui se déroulera à Toronto du 15 au 21 juillet 2018 et est organisée par le comité de recherche RC56 (Historical Sociology), notamment lié à la fondation Norbert Elias.

XIX ISA - world congress of sociology, Toronto, Canada - July 15th to 20th 2018

Argument

Combat at a distance is not new and precedes what Elias called "the civilizing process", but the development and generalization of firearms in warfare taking place between 1300 and 1600 seems, remarkably, to coincide with it.

The relations between the "process of civilization" and new types of weapons are striking and ambiguous. On the one hand, these transformations enabled killing on a new dimension and scale. And since the World Wars not only soldiers but also great parts of the civilian population fall victim to mass killings because of new types of weapons. On the other hand, fencing, suffocating, stabbing, seem to lose their importance in the killing from a distance. The atomic bomb kills millions but it needs only a person pushing a button. Drone warfare is also an example of what may call ironically ”civilised warfare”.

There is no need for the spontaneity, affectivity and other forms of fierce emotions that one could find on the battlefields of the past.

This session invites sociologists, socio-historians and historians to question the transformation of the manners of making war and violence in its complexity. The intervention could consider the proxemic dimension (Hall, 1966) of a battle, but also the representation of violence at any given time, or the fact that some modalities of violence are considered less "respectable" than others, paradoxically independently of the number of victims they claim.

Submission guidelines

Deadline : September 20th 2017

Abstracts (300 words max.) have to be submitted at the following address : https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2018/webprogrampreliminary/Session10152.html

Then you will be asked to register through a form.

RC 56 : Historical Sociology

Figurational Research Network – Norbert Elias Foundation

Call Authors / Organizers

• Dieter REICHER, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Graz, Austria.
• Ilan LEW, Research Associate in Sociology, University of Geneva & PhD Candidate CADIS – École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

References

Culture and War studies.

• AUDOIN-ROUZEAU, Stéphane, Combattre. Une anthropologie historique de la guerre moderne (XIXème - XXIème siècle). Paris : Seuil, 2008.
• ELIAS, Norbert, The Civilizing Process. Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000 [1939].
• HALL, Edward T. The Hidden Dimension. New-York: Garden City, 1966.
• KUZMICS, Helmut et Sabine HARING, Emotion, Habitus und Erster Weltkrieg. Soziologische Studien zum militärischen Untergang der Habsburger Monarchie. Göttingen, 2013.
• MENNELL, Stephen, The American Civilizing Process. Cambridge: Polity, 2007.
• PARKER, Geoffrey, ed. The Cambridge History of Warfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.