Tarak Barkawi: The Globalisation of the Hollywood War Film

For a long time, people in other countries had to watch American war films. Now they are making their own. Recently, Russia and Germany have produced dueling filmic visions of their great contest in World War II

Peoples, Homelands, and Wars? Ethnicity, the Military, and Battle among British Imperial Forces in the War against Japan

Ethnicity is increasingly central to analysis of war. Whether conceived in essentialist or constructivist terms, ethnicity is often accorded explanatory primacy in accounting for the organization and use of violence in wartime settings, in part due to the utility of processes of othering for group mobilization. Both the political and ideological context of hostilities as well as the motivations of combatants in the actual making of wartime violence are frequently conceptualized in ethnic and racialized terms. In a word, wartime violence is domesticated; it is seen as arising from the identities of, and commitments to, homelands

Orientalism in Times of War: Why 'Small Wars' Have Big Consequences

Streaming video requires RealPlayer to view.The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.Tarak Barkawi is senior lecturer in international security at the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge. He is lecturing on his current book project "Orientalism in Times of War: Why 'Small Wars' Have Big Consequences."Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent webpage, streaming video, photo

Combat and Historiography in the Battle of Sangshak

Produced by soldiers and veterans, the materials through which we seek to understand war carry war's antagonisms; they are shaped by fighting, by specific battles, by old debts and lost arguments between commanders, invoiced in the lives of their soldiers. In a way, military historiography is too close to its own subject matter. Clarity demands an exacting reflexivity, of a kind evident in the life and work of Louis Allen, a Japanese-speaking British military intelligence officer who participated in the Burma campaign and wrote its standard account, Burma: The Longest War 1941-45. Between the first and second editions of that book, Allen became embroiled in historiographical disagreement with veterans of the Battle of Sangshak. He helps guide us through some of the ways in which history is a continuation of war by other means

International origins of social and political theory: introduction

This article introduces the main themes that animate this special issue: the necessary entanglement of theory and history, the cortical relationship between theory and practice, and the transboundary (i.e., international) relations that help to constitute systems of both thought and practice. We integrate the contributions to the special issue within these overarching themes and identify their main contributions. We make three core arguments: first, all theory is situated knowledge, derived in and through historical context; second, theory-practice is a single field in which theory arises out of and acts upon historical experience; and third, both social and political theory have international origins, arising from transboundary encounters

The postcolonial moment in security studies

In this article, we critique the Eurocentric character of security studies as it has developed since World War II. The taken-for-granted historical geographies that underpin security studies systematically misrepresent the role of the global South in security relations and lead to a distorted view of Europe and the West in world politics. Understanding security relations, past and present, requires acknowledging the mutual constitution of European and non-European worlds and their joint role in making history. The politics of Eurocentric security studies, those of the powerful, prevent adequate understanding of the nature or legitimacy of the armed resistance of the weak. Through analysis of the explanatory and political problems Eurocentrism generates, this article lays the groundwork for the development of a non-Eurocentric security studies.</jats:p

Connection and Constitution: Locating War and Culture in Globalization Studies

ABSTRACT War and the military are neglected in globalization studies, despite the fact that the worldwide circulation of people, goods and ideas often takes warlike form. This article seeks to remedy this neglect by conceiving war itself as a form of interconnection between peoples and locales, and as an occasion for circulation and interchange. The article develops a multidimensional and historical conception of globalization as relations of connection and mutual constitution, and locates war and culture within them. Cultural approaches to globalization are used to illuminate the role of war and the military in consciousness of the world as a whole and to address the significance of military &apos;traveling cultures&apos;. The end of the Cold War saw the rise of globalization as a frame for conceiving world politics, for scholars, politicians, policy analysts and the public. Alongside the neoliberal &apos;globalist&apos; agenda that framed much discussion in policy and media circles, a diverse and multidisciplinary scholarly literature developed with extraordinary rapidity. Liberated from the peculiar confines of the discipline of International Relations (IR), with its obsession for sovereignty and relative neglect of social relations, a rich and exciting body of thought concerning the &apos;international&apos; broadly conceived has grown around the globalization concept, with economists, sociologists, anthropologists and historians as well as political scientists making important if sometimes contradictory contributions. IR took as its central problem the question of war and peace. By contrast, with some important exceptions, in globalization studies relatively little attention is paid to war, despite the frequency of armed conflict since 1989. Where war is considered, it most often is understood as a separate and distinct phenomenon from globalization. There is for example a debate over whether or not economic globalization promotes peace or causes wa

On the conduct of sociological warfare: a reply to special section on Economy of Force

It is an honour to receive commentaries on Economy of Force from these four distinguished scholars. I am grateful to Tarak Barkawi, Patchen Markell, Julian Go, and Vivienne Jabri for devoting precious scholarly time to this book. Economy of Force is not about the ‘economics of war’, or not in any straightforward sense. Rather it retrieves the older, but surprisingly neglected, history and theory of oikonomia, ancient Greek for household governance. The book is a study of oikonomia in the use of military force, but also as underlying distinctly social forms of governance more broadly. There is a very long tradition of thinking about households-as-government and a great deal of scholarship in literary and gender studies on practices and ideologies of domesticity. Oikonomia is the origin of the language of modern ‘economics’, but more importantly and revealingly almost all writing about government in the West. International and much political theory is out of touch with these literatures resulting in blindness to a crucial reality about modern governance forms. The large-scale household administration of life processes plays a remarkably central role in international and imperial relations. Economy of Force illustrates this through a history of so-called ‘armed social work’ in counterinsurgency, beginning with late-nineteenth-century French and American colonial pacification and then detailed case studies of two late-colonial British emergencies in Malaya and Kenya, US counterinsurgency in Vietnam, and US-led multinational campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. In each case, to varying degrees and in different ways, the civilian base of armed resistance was weakened through the forcible removal and mass concentration of civilians; the selective delivery and withholding of humanitarian supplies; the empowering of local collaborators to rule ‘their population’; detention without trial and exemplary massacres; and the opening of markets and new schools. If insurgents and counterinsurgents are in a competition in government, then what is the nature of government under counterinsurgency rule? Through violence and control over life, through the management of gendered and racialised bodies in their extreme and irreducible vulnerability, counterinsurgents were seeking to create units of rule in which populations could be domesticated. That is, they drew on and innovated different forms of household management

War, armed forces and society in postcolonial perspective

What can postcolonialism tell us about international relations? What can international relations tell us about postcolonialism? In recent years, postcolonial perspectives and insights have challenged our conventional understanding of international politics. Postcolonial Theory and International Relations is the first book to provide a comprehensive and accessible survey of how postcolonialism radically alters our understanding of international relations. Each chapter is written by a leading international scholar and looks at the core components of international relations – theories, the nation, geopolitics, international law, war, international political economy, sovereignty, religion, nationalism, Empire etc. – through a postcolonial lens. In so doing it provides students with a valuable insight into the challenges that postcolonialism poses to our understanding of global politics