On War Today

This special issue collects a sample of articles that engage contemporary politics of war. We selected two themes that have featured prominently in international political sociology. The first focuses on political issues at stake in visualising war and the bodies of soldiers and what representational methods tell us about the relation between war and politics today. The second issue concerns the idea of new wars. Between them the selected articles explore the nature of contemporary wars, if there is anything new about them, and what a critical and international political sociological war studies can be today.
 

Bodies in war and the politics of visibility

Encountering Violence: Terrorism and Horrorism in War and Citizenship
Cynthia Weber
Volume 8, Issue 3

The Politics of Drawing: Children, Evidence, and the Darfur Conflict
Claudia Aradau and Andrew Hill
Volume 7, Issue 4

The Private Militarized and Security Contractor as Geocorporeal Actor
Paul Higate
Volume 6, Issue 4

War and the Allegory of Medical Intervention: Why Metaphors Matter
Colleen Bell
Volume 6, Issue 3

The Presence of War: “Here and Elsewhere”
Michael J. Shapiro
Volume 5, Issue 2

The Child Soldier in North-South Relations
Lorraine Macmillan
Volume 3, Issue 1

"Post-Heroic Warfare” and Ghosts—The Social Control of Dead American Soldiers in Iraq
Christophe Wasinski
Volume 2, Issue 2
 

New wars?

Powers of War: Fighting, Knowledge, and Critique
Tarak Barkawi and Shane Brighton
Volumue 5, Issue 2

The Police of Civilization: The War on Terror as Civilizing Offensive
Mark Neocleous
Volume 5, Issue 2

Spirits of War: A Field Manual
Josef Teboho Ansorge
Volume 4, Issue 4

The Sociology of New Wars? Assessing the Causes and Objectives of Contemporary Violent Conflicts
Siniša Malešević
Volume 2, Issue 2

Michel Foucault’s Analytics of War: The Social, the International, and the Racial
Vivienne Jabri