This introductory chapter gives an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a Special Issue of Critical Military Studies creates an inter-disciplinary space to explore embodied experiences of militarism, militarization, and war, and engages with some of the challenges faced when studying the military. The pieces collected here, in their own ways, stretch the concepts of militarism and militarization in directions that pay attention to its emotional, embodied, sensed, and corporeal manifestations. Militarism and militarization have in recent years often been sidelined in much academic debate, consequently creating a gap in research across the social sciences. While embodiment has been a central focus in anthropology, notably during the paradigmatic shift of the 1970s and 1980s towards the 'anthropology of the body', there is a distinct lack of anthropological work that connects these themes with militarism, with some important exceptions.</p
