War thinking as a social practice and international law.

Abstract

The article reveals little-studied aspects of war as a social practice. It is shown that social practices are intertwined with social reality and are the consequences of local transformations of people’s usual actions, which indicates the dynamics of the society’s development as a whole and a “pragmatic turn” in modern humanities and social sciences. It is pointed out that war as a social phenomenon and social practice has been inherent in humanity since the earliest times. Intelligence service became possible thanks to the analysis of the works of scientists-specialists in the field of social philosophy and international law, published in periodicals and monographic literature, which served as material for the study of this topic. On the basis of modern developments of the concept of social practices, the author proves that war is one of the utilitarian social practices of our time. It is indicated that all social practices (including war) basically have an activity aspect, therefore they can be effectively investigated using the activity approach. Particular attention in the article is paid to the temporal characteristics of war as a social practice, in particular: uncertainty, clarity of chronological limits, contextuality and situationality, and the specificity of social time. Within the situational and contextual nature of war as a social practice, it is proved that the invariability of axiological core of war as an armed clash of adversaries does not exclude changes in the forms of war determined by a specific sociocultural context. Considerable attention in the article is paid to the modern form of war – network-centric, which has formed within the framework of the modern information society and is the result of the application of the latest scientific achievements in the field of information and communication technologies. The article also reflects the issues of ritualization, war customs and military affairs.