Participation In Warfare Research Articles

The transformation of participatory warfare: The role of narratives in connective mobilization in the Russia–Ukraine war

The participatory affordances of digital media allow a broad spectrum of new forms of participation in conflicts that go beyond the information domain (Boichak in Battlefront volunteers: mapping and deconstructing civilian resilience networks in Ukraine. #SMSociety’17, July 28–30, 2017). This article explores the factors that shape forms of digitally mediated participation in warfare. It highlights the association between narratives of statehood and forms of conflict-related mobilization of volunteers that rely on digital platforms. Rooted in an analysis of a dataset of digital platforms that mediated engagement in the warfare and 31 in-depth interviews with Ukrainian digital activists, it offers a model that helps to explain the diversity of modes of connective mobilization in the context of the war and the shifts in the role of digitally mediated conflict-related mobilization. The analysis does not aim to provide a linear model that explains the forms of mobilization but rather seeks to develop a framework that helps us understand the changes taking place in the scope and forms of participation in wars relying on digital platforms. The model suggests that the strengthening of narratives of statehood is associated with a transformation of conflict-related mobilization away from crowdsourcing and towards the emergence of organizations offering warfare-related outsourcing services and in some cases the incorporation of digital resources into state institutions (insourcing).

СОВЕТСКАЯ ИСТОРИОГРАФИЯ ПАРТИЗАНСКОГО ДВИЖЕНИЯ В СИБИРИ 1950—1980-Х ГОДОВ: ДОСТИЖЕНИЯ И ПРОСЧЕТЫ

The article presents an analysis of the Soviet historiography of the partisan movement in Siberia in the late 1950s–1980s. The processes of overcoming the consequences of the cult of personality in historical science, the revival and development of the Leninist concept of the Civil War are studied. Its influence on the content of research is characterized. Their main directions and results are identified. It is noted that a lot of work has been done to introduce new sources into scientific circulation. The scope of research has expanded, and the number of publications has significantly increased. Positive results were achieved in studying formation, structure, strength, deployment of partisan detachments and formations, their participation in warfare, authority organisation in partisan areas, and the struggle of political groups in the partisan movement. However, the preservation of ideological dogmas prevented objective and comprehensive studies of such a complex, multifaceted phenomenon as the partisan movement in Siberia. Contrary to reality, influence of the Bolshevik Party and the Bolshevik underground on formation and development of the movement was significantly exaggerated. The questions about partisan terror, criminal component of the movement, and relations between partisans and the indigenous population remained outside the scope of research. The partisans’ relations with the local population, their political moods and orientations were biased. Therefore, Soviet historians failed to create an objective and complete picture of the partisan movement in Siberia during the Civil War. At the same time, modern researchers should not ignore the Soviet legacy, they should rely on its positive results.

MORAL INJURY AND TRAGIC SENSIBILITY

AbstractSince Jonathan Shay's work with Vietnam veterans, moral injury has largely focused on the harm done to soldiers' moral character through their participation in warfare. This essay argues for the inclusion of noncombatants in the scope of inquiry involving moral injury. Specifically, it argues for the necessity of ordinary citizens assuming responsibility for the moral injury done to soldiers and civilians alike in the post‐9/11 wars.

Delivering life, delivering death: Reaper drones, hysteria and maternity

Like all warfare, drone warfare is deeply gendered. This article explores how this military technology sediments or disrupts existing conceptualizations of women who kill in war. The article using the concept of motherhood as a narrative organizing trope and introduces a ‘fictional’ account of motherhood and drone warfare and data from a ‘real life’ account of a pregnant British Reaper operator. The article considers the way trauma experienced by Reaper drone crews is reported in a highly gendered manner, reflecting the way women’s violence is generally constructed as resulting from personal failures, lost love and irrational emotionality. This irrational emotionality is tied to a long history of medicalizing women’s bodies and psychologies because of their reproductive capacities and, specifically, their wombs – explored in this article under the historico-medical term of ‘hysteria’. The article argues that where barriers to women’s participation in warfare have, in the past, hinged upon their (argued) physical weakness, and where technology renders these barriers obsolete, there remains the tenacious myth that women are emotionally incapable of conducting lethal operations – a myth based on (mis)conceptions of the ‘naturalness’ of motherhood and the feminine capacity to give life.

From sofa to frontline: The digital mediation and domestication of warfare

Much attention has been dedicated to how digital platforms change the nature of modern conflict. However, less has been paid to how the changes in the nature of warfare affect everyday lives. This article examines how digital mediation allows a convergence of the domestic environment and the battlefield by offering new ways for participation in warfare. It contributes to the discussion of how new participatory affordances change the nature of conflicts and whether they empower users or offer institutional actors more control over users. To this end, this research explores the transformation of domestic spaces, mediated via memes, as digital artefacts of participatory culture (see Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, 2009, by Henry Jenkins). Building on the notion of domestication (see Domesticating the Revolution: Information and Communication Technologies and Everyday Life, 1993, by Roger Silverstone), the article conducts a discursive analysis of memes referring to the notion of ‘sofa warfare’ – an ironic description of internet users taking part in conflict without leaving their own sofas – in the context of the Russia–Ukraine conflict.

'Defending the castle like a man.' On belligerent medieval ladies

Contemporary evidence shows that between approximately the eleventh and fourteenth centuries noble women not only defended and built castles and commanded troops, but sometimes even partook in fighting. In fact, the examples of women involved in warfare are so numerous that they must have received some sort of military education. This article is concerned with the question why medieval sources, if female participation in war acts was indeed fairly widespread, played down this female involvement to the point of hushing up women’s role in military events almost completely. It will be suggested that the main reasons for this were, firstly, that it is was considered unladylike to fight, even though it was a necessary evil when things got out of hand, and, secondly, that the necessity for women to fight reflected badly on men. The least said about female participation in warfare was therefore considered the better.

Child volunteers in a women's paramilitary organization in World War II have accelerated reproductive schedules

Understanding how conditions experienced during development affect reproductive timing is of considerable cross-disciplinary interest. Life-history theory predicts that organisms will accelerate reproduction when future survival is unsure. In humans, this can be triggered by early exposure to mortality. Previous studies, however, have been inconclusive due to several confounds that are also likely to affect reproduction. Here we take advantage of a natural experiment in which a population is temporarily divided by war to analyze how exposure to mortality affects reproduction. Using records of Finnish women in World War II, we find that young girls serving in a paramilitary organization wait less time to reproduce, have shorter inter-birth intervals, and have more children than their non-serving peers or sisters. These results support the hypothesis that exposure to elevated mortality rates during development can result in accelerated reproductive schedules and adds to our understanding of how participation in warfare affects women.

Why war is a man's game.

Interest in the evolutionary origins and drivers of warfare in ancient and contemporary small-scale human societies has greatly increased in the last decade, and has been particularly spurred by exciting archaeological discoveries that suggest our ancestors led more violent lives than previously documented. However, the striking observation that warfare is an almost-exclusively male activity remains unexplained. Three general hypotheses have been proposed, concerning greater male effectiveness in warfare, lower male costs, and patrilocality. But while each of these factors might explain why warfare is more common in men, they do not convincingly explain why women almost never participate. Here, we develop a mathematical model to formally assess these hypotheses. Surprisingly, we find that exclusively male warfare may evolve even in the absence of any such sex differences, though sex biases in these parameters can make this evolutionary outcome more likely. The qualitative observation that participation in warfare is almost exclusive to one sex is ultimately explained by the fundamentally sex-specific nature of Darwinian competition—in fitness terms, men compete with men and women with women. These results reveal a potentially key role for ancestral conditions in shaping our species' patterns of sexual division of labour and violence-related adaptations and behavioural disorders.

Succumbing to the Call of Violence - Sex-Linked Development of Appetitive Aggression in Relation to Familial and Organized Violence.

Appetitive aggression is the attraction to violent behavior, which can peak in the experience of a combat high. In various war and conflict scenarios, members of armed groups have reported developing a desire to hunt and even kill humans. More recently, we reported that the phenomenon has also been observed in female ex-combatants with varying participation in warfare. Despite recent investigations on risk factors for appetitive aggression, sex-specific pathways in the development of appetitive aggression have not yet been delineated. This study investigated moderation effects of sex on previously identified risk factors for appetitive aggression by means of regression analyses in a sample of individuals with varying degrees of warfare participation (overall sample, n = 602). First examining a sample characterized by backgrounds heterogeneous in both sociodemographic data and war experiences, the analysis was then replicated in a subsample of fighters active during the civil war (combatant sample, n = 109). In both samples, regression analyses revealed significant moderation effects of sex. Childhood maltreatment and traumatic events had positive associations on the development of appetitive aggression for males but a negative (childhood maltreatment) or no (traumatic events) association for females. Perpetrated events were more strongly correlated with appetitive aggression for females than for males. This pattern was pronounced for the combatant sample. These results are in favor of sex-linked pathways. In both sexes, appetitive aggression may have evolved as a biologically prepared response to cruel environments but might develop along different trajectories. The current study highlights the need for addressing appetitive aggression in order to support peace-building processes and emphasizes sex specific starting-points.

Warfare and reproductive success in a tribal population.

Intergroup conflict is a persistent feature of many human societies yet little is known about why individuals participate when doing so imposes a mortality risk. To evaluate whether participation in warfare is associated with reproductive benefits, we present data on participation in small-scale livestock raids among the Nyangatom, a group of nomadic pastoralists in East Africa. Nyangatom marriages require the exchange of a significant amount of bridewealth in the form of livestock. Raids are usually intended to capture livestock, which raises the question of whether and how these livestock are converted into reproductive opportunities. Over the short term, raiders do not have a greater number of wives or children than nonraiders. However, elders who were identified as prolific raiders in their youth have more wives and children than other elders. Raiders were not more likely to come from families with fewer older maternal sisters or a greater number of older maternal brothers. Our results suggest that in this cultural context raiding provides opportunities for increased reproductive success over the lifetime.

The Role of Rewards in Motivating Participation in Simple Warfare

In the absence of explicit punitive sanctions, why do individuals voluntarily participate in intergroup warfare when doing so incurs a mortality risk? Here we consider the motivation of individuals for participating in warfare. We hypothesize that in addition to other considerations, individuals are incentivized by the possibility of rewards. We test a prediction of this "cultural rewards war-risk hypothesis" with ethnographic literature on warfare in small-scale societies. We find that a greater number of benefits from warfare is associated with a higher rate of death from conflict. This provides preliminary support for the relationship between rewards and participation in warfare.

Orthodox Perspectives on Peace, War and Violence

Orthodox Perspectives on Peace, War and Violence

Organizing at the Margins: Women Shape the Labor Movement

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The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts by Meir Shahar (review)

Book Reviews 187 The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts MEIR SHAHAR. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008. xi, 281 pages. ISBN 978-0-8248-3110-3. US$54.00 hardcover. Meir Shahar’s study of the Shaolin Monastery (Shaolin si 少林寺) is one of the rare academic books on the history of Chinese martial arts and its philosophical and religious implications. It begins with an introduction that provides a catalogue of questions on the origins of the Shaolin martial arts, the reasons for the contradiction between the Buddhist rule of nonviolent behavior and the practice of martial arts in a Buddhist monastery, the role of Buddhist faith in military activities, and the time when the Shaolin martial arts emerged. The following three main sections divide the history of the Shaolin Monastery from its beginning in 495 until the end of the 19th century. Each section contains several chapters illustrating important aspects of the historical development and the practice of martial arts. Shahar begins with a survey of the political, cultural, and economic environment of the Shaolin Monastery. He argues that the strategic position of the monastery near the mountain pass to Luoyang 洛陽 and its control of the Baigu 柏谷 fortress led to the Shaolin monks becoming involved in military activities. Chinese emperors supported Shaolin from the beginning by granting gifts in the form of land, mills, etc. This is an important aspect that characterized Shaolin as a monastery under imperial patronage, and the main reason for the wealth of Shaolin’s Buddhist community. This solid economic basis probably enabled the growth of other activities such as martial arts practice. There is no doubt that Shaolin monks practiced it before they established connections to the Tang house, but to my knowledge there is no evidence for an active participation of Shaolin monks in warfare before the Tang, as Shahar claims. With respect to the military activities of the Shaolin monks a strict distinction should be made between the military sphere of martial arts (i.e. the participation in warfare as part of the imperial army) and the civil sphere of martial arts (for example, the defense of the monastery). A tricky issue is the question of meat consumption by Shaolin monks. This may demonstrate either the far-reaching tolerance of Mahayana Buddhism in China, or alternatively the weakening of the original vinaya rules in the Buddhist community. However, Shahar’s discussion of this topic is based on a shaky empirical foundation. With the exception of only one source from the 16th century there is no other evidence for meat consumption in Shaolin. I do not think that fiction and movies are reliable sources to supplement the insufficient historical data. Shahar’s second main section of Shaolin’s history includes the time from 900 to 1600, but the examination starts with the Ming 明 Dynasty (1368-1644). This causes one to wonder what was going on from 900 to 1300? Why there is no information on the abbot Fuyu 福裕, who founded new Shaolin Monasteries in Helin 和林, Yanji 燕薊, Chang’an 長安, Taiyuan 太 原, and Luoyang 洛陽 during the Yuan 元 period? The following Ming period is famous for 188 Journal of Chinese Religions the participation of Shaolin monks in warfare to defend the empire against raiders, bandits, and pirates. At the same time, Shaolin martial arts spread out and became famous. Shahar cites Cheng Zongyou 程宗猷, a famous martial artist during the Ming period, who explained that Shaolin monks used martial arts as a tool for religious self-cultivation. According to the Chan masters, enlightenment is possible in all situations of daily life. The practice of martial arts seemed to create a new opportunity to achieve the Buddhist goal. Another interesting aspect of this section deals with the origins and development of Shaolin staff fighting. The staff techniques established the good reputation of Shaolin’s martial arts. Shahar quotes Tang Hao 唐豪 who assumed that there were two traditions of Shaolin staff techniques. In his fine and detailed analysis of “staff legends,” the author demonstrates how Shaolin monks attributed their staff fighting to Vajrapani, a Buddhist guardian deity. On the one hand, as he argues, their attribution to the god enhanced the prestige of Shaolin martial arts...

Security for whom?

The most important political and ethical issues in North American anthropology today concern anthropologists' relationships with the "security and intelligence communities." The call for anthropological participation in warfare has never been so intense, yet recruitment of anthropologists is not new for hegemonic anthropologies. Their relationships with state power have a long history of contradictory political and professional engagements. After a brief discussion of the notion of national security and its intimate relations to nation-state projects and elites, I consider the importance of culture and anthropological knowledge for politicians and conclude first that anthropologists need to be aware of how the discipline and its uses are part of much larger power relations and constraints, and second that anthropological knowledge is already always political.

The People in Arms: Military Myth and National Mobilization since the French Revolution (review)

Reviewed by: The People in Arms: Military Myth and National Mobilization since the French Revolution Eliot A. Cohen The People in Arms: Military Myth and National Mobilization since the French Revolution. Edited by Daniel Moran and Arthur Waldron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-81432-4. Notes. Index. Pp. 268. £47.50. If one had to pick a central concept that characterized European warfare in the nineteenth century the levée en masse would naturally come to mind. In the usual narrative, the French Revolution's ability to unleash and exploit the energies of its citizens swept away the armies of the ancien régime, who could not recover until they had, in a famous phrase, "rifled the armory of the revolution." To be sure, military historians have long pointed out the gross weaknesses of such an oversimplified view: the reliance of the French armies on the drill books and methods, and even many of the personnel of the monarchical army; the evolution of the French army under Napoleon into a bureaucratically efficient machine in which republican enthusiasm played a much diminished role; the effectiveness of militaries like the British which, once reformed, could fight the French on equal terms. Still, the idea of mass warfare characterized by a mobilization of soldiers from the entire population, and supported by nationalist ardor, remains a topic of interest to historians. The People in Arms is a competent collection of essays on this subject. Not surprisingly, the focus is on France and secondarily Europe, although there are two essays on the idea of the levée en masse in China and Vietnam. The one American chapter, by John Whiteclay Chambers, deals more with American impressions of European events than with the American experience proper. This is unfortunate, perhaps, because the American model of mass citizen participation in warfare deserves more comparative analysis than it normally receives (some of the work of Stig Förster and his colleagues being a noteworthy exception). The Civil War, for example, seems to have had some effect on British thinking about voluntary citizen militias in the latter part of the century, and even the Revolution had its effect on European soldiers through men like Johann von Ewald. The essays here explore different aspects of the myth of the people in arms. They highlight in different contexts the tension inherent between the [End Page 248] ideological or mythic aspects of citizen service in war, on the one hand, and the administrative requirements of raising armies adequate for particular purposes on the other. Convincingly, if unsurprisingly, the authors all conclude that myth and reality rarely coincided, and for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, the technological dimension is missing in much of this book: the levée en masse requires, after all, ways of war in which weapons can be mass-produced and soldiers trained with them in relatively short periods of time. They require too forms of warfare in which sheer numbers count for a great deal, something which is not always the case. As in all collections, some of these essays are better than others. Arthur Waldron's piece on Chinese discovery of the French revolutionary experience, and the later translation of the French socialist Jean Jaurès's book on military service is a fascinating study of how history and military concepts move between continents. By itself, in fact, it makes a merely useful edited volume something more valuable. Eliot A. Cohen Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies Baltimore, Maryland Copyright © 2005 Society for Military History

Participation in warfare: a literature review.

Participation in warfare: a literature review.

Religion, the Constitution and Rawlsian Justice: A Critical Analysis of David A. J. Richards on the Religion Clauses

What sort of relation between religion and government does the Constitution of the United States affirm? As anyone even remotely familiar with the subject will know, this question is large as well as enormously complex and invites reflection on a host of subsidiary problems: What are the precise meanings of the religion clauses of the Constitution's first amendment, clauses which proscribe congressional legislation “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise, thereof”? How broadly is the notion of “religion” to be construed here? Does the implied right of free exercise attach to any commitment or action conscientiously embraced (e.g., conscientious objection to participation in warfare)? Or are we to interpret the guaranteed religious freedom in narrower terms? What precisely is the relationship between the “no establishment” and “free exercise” provisions? Might there not be circumstances in which conditions necessary to ensure genuinely free exercise require the sort of “excessive entanglement” that suggests governmental establishment of religion (e.g., state support for parochial schools)? Or is such a worry founded on mistaken understandings of the “free exercise” and “no establishment” provisions? Are the amendment's anti-establishment restrictions limited to federal legislation or do the restrictions apply also to state governments via “incorporation” provisions of the fourteenth amendment? Is the primary purpose of the religion clauses to protect government from religion or religion from government, and if the latter, does the Constitution then permit governmental support of religion so long as no particular religions are preferred? Would such support destroy a “wall of separation” erected by the first amendment? Or is the idea of a “wall of separation,” in this understanding at least, foreign to the sense of the constitutional text? In what respect is knowing the original intentions of the first amendment's framers or ratifiers relevant to interpreting the meaning of the amendment's provisions? How are these intentions to be discovered? And so forth.

Microbes and Muskets: Smallpox and the Participation of the Amerindian Allies of New France in the Seven Years' War

The Amerindian allies of New France accepted annual French invitations to take part in Seven Years' War but decided themselves how many warriors would actually appear in field. These decisions were made in response to two smallpox epidemics that broke out during war. The numbers of Amerindian warriors fighting alongside French declined precipitously after outbreaks of smallpox but rose again when they had passed. The arrival of Europeans created a new worldl for native peoples of North America. Postcontact Amerindians had no choice but to confront challenge of life in a once-familiar habitat that was now infested with new groups of humans and flora, fauna, and microbes that accompanied them. Two manifestations of radically changed geopolitical and biological environments created by newcomers to North America were epidemic disease and intra-European warfare.2 In mid-eighteenth century, Amerindians of Great Lakes (among others) faced both when a series of epidemics broke out during Seven Years' War. Their response, at once pragmatic and informed, reveals something of Amerindian adjustment to realities of life in postcontact North America, a process that remains in progress as twentieth century draws to a close. Following establishment of European settlements in North America, Amerindians were frequently drawn into warfare between rival colonies. The issues at stake might or might not directly affect their concerns, but belligerent Europeans invariably attempted to involve their Amerindian allies in these conflicts. Amerindian participation in warfare demanded decisions by groups and individuals regarding whether or not to go to war and number of Ethnohistory 39:I (Winter I992). Copyright ? by American Society for Ethnohistory. ccc OOI4-i8o/ 9z/$i.50. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.145 on Sat, 02 Jul 2016 04:29:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Smallpox and Amerindians in Seven Years' War warriors that would actually fight. These decisions could be based upon factors ranging from cold calculations of geopolitical advantage to desire for recreation and individual prestige.3 Throughout Seven Years' War, Amerindian allies of New France had to decide how to respond to annual invitations to go to war in central theater on behalf of French.4 The details of their deliberations are unrecorded, but results were manifested in a series of dramatic fluctuations in numbers of Amerindians serving alongside French in this theater, as individuals and groups elected to proffer or withhold their services. These variations correspond to smallpox epidemics. Sharp declines in size of Amerindian contingent in central theater occurred immediately after outbreaks of disease; when epidemics had passed, their numbers in field increased once more. Whatever positive factors impelled Amerindians to go to war in I750s, numbers of warriors who actually took part in campaigns in central theater between 1755 and 1759 were determined by reactions of allies to flourishing and fading of smallpox virus.5 The first official French contacts with inhabitants of New World in I53os were characterized by treachery and violence on part of French adventurers, who quickly alienated Amerindians. Nevertheless, in first decades of seventeenth century, a second wave of French expeditions established amicable and mutually profitable relations with native people and began to form concomitant military alliances that would endure until British conquest. The Seven Years' War was last, supreme test of effectiveness of Franco-Amerindian alliance system. With New France fighting for its very survival and heavily outnumbered in field, both by Anglo-American colonials and by British regulars, French relied to a considerable extent upon manpower provided by their Amerindian allies to offset imbalance. Without them, conceded one French staff officer who had no particular love for Amerindians, the odds would be too unequal for us.6 In event, alliance system rose to challenge and proved capable of delivering a substantial force of Amerindian warriors to fight alongside French regulars and Canadian militiamen.7 While war in North America raged from Louisbourg in Acadia to Fort Duquesne on Ohio, most important region for defense of New France was central theater, which comprised seigneurial tract of Canada, together with its approaches, and extended from eastern Lake Ontario to Quebec.8 Rather than form raiding parties, like their counterparts in Acadia and Ohio country, bulk of Amerindians serving in this sector were employed as auxiliaries to French field army, 43 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.145 on Sat, 02 Jul 2016 04:29:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Participation in Conferences, Treaties, and Warfare in the European System, 1816-1915

Intergovernmental cooperation in Europe has been operationalized by the number of participants in intergovernmental conferences and treaties. These data have been decomposed into two groups, one group containing the number of participants in conferences and treaties on war-related issues and the second containing the same data on peace-related issues. By applying time series analysis to these data sets and to data sets containing the number of participants in warfare and the number of nation-months of warfare, the neutralizing effects of both sets of data on conferences and treaties has been confirmed. An increase in the number of participants in conferences and treaties on war-related issues increased the number of participants in warfare, and vice versa. A large number of participants in conferences and treaties on peace-related issues decreased the number of participants in warfare, whereas the inverse relationship was positive; that is, the number of participants in conference and treaties on peace-related issues increased due to the large number of participants in warfare.