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Security Practices and Political Violence
POLI-D-520
Universit Libre de BruxellesSecond Semester 2012/2013Fridays ;
14:00 - 16:00 ; S. AY2.108
Master en sciences politiques, orientation Relations
internationales, finalitScurit, paix, conflits - 2e anneMaster in
Political Sciences (English Program)
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Christian Olsson
Office Hours: Mondays 14:30-16:30
Office Location: IEE, av. FD Roosevelt 39, R41.3.107
E-mail : [email protected]
GENERAL PRESENTATION
This courses aim is to encourage critical thinking on past and
contemporary forms of
organized violence. While in peace & conflict studies the
focus is on the partly statistical
construct of armed conflicts (analyzed through data-bases), we
will here rather look at the
historical and social constructs of warfare and security.
The course is divided into two sections. The first one analyzes
the historical
contingencies and conditions of possibility of organized
violence and warfare It tries to
understand their historical variations at the macro-sociological
level. Questions dealt with in
this part include: what is war? How has it changed our world?
How has it itself changed since
the end of the Middle Ages until today? To what extent is the
practice of warfare mainly a
prerogative of the state? Is organized violence any different in
the Western world compared
to other parts of the world?
The second section deals with the professionalization of
security: the practices of the
professionals of security (the military, the police,
intelligence services etc.). While not loosing
sight of the historical perspective, the focus is here on the
micro-sociological underpinnings
of the world of security-professionals.. Questions that will be
lingered on in this section
include: why and to what extent has warfare become a distinct
profession? Is there a
difference between specialists of security and specialists of
violence? How have security
practices changed and what is at stake?
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Both of the sections will draw on the historical sociology of
the state. The latters
research project is heavily inspired by the seminal works of Max
Weber and Norbert Elias,
but also by the more recent work of Charles Tilly and Pierre
Bourdieu amongst others. The
historical sociology - or more modestly the historically
informed sociology - of the state
approaches history, not as a field of data to be mined, but as a
way to problematize the
present. In International Relations (IR), historical sociology
is increasingly incorporated intothe discipline. While current
historical sociology of IR is mainly interested in reframing
such
broad categories as the international system, it will here
mainly serve to analyse present-day
security practices, warfare and political violence from a
critical point of view.
COURSE REQUISITESThere are a few prerequisites to attend this
course.
1. First, students must be acquainted with social sciences. They
must have at least attended in
previous years about five basic courses in fields such as
anthropology, sociology, psychology,
history, political science, issue areas
2. Second, students must have attended, and successfully passed
the exam of, at least one ofthe following courses: international
economy; history of the 20th century; international
relations; foreign policy; international public law;
international organizations.
3. Third, students must be fluent in English.
OBJECTIVES
The course is designed to help you achieve the following four
objectives
1/ Be familiar with the concepts, theories and intellectual
tools discussed inhistorical sociology;
2/ Acquire a critical understanding of the social and historical
background of
contemporary developments in armed conflicts, political violence
and security practices;
3/ Establish awareness and analytic perspective with regard to
the social conditions,
such as complex social organizations and ideology, enabling
organized violence
4/ Understand concretely why and how war is neither universal,
nor inevitable
TEACHING METHODS AND MANDATORY READINGS
The course will take the form of twelve classes of two hours
each.
Prior to some of the classes, one text has to be read by all
students: these readings are
mandatory and must be read in a careful and reflexive way. They
are to allow the students to
grasp the topics and issues presented during the classes, to
participate in discussions For the
exam you will be asked to read all of the texts. The texts can
be found in electronic version on
the Universit Virtuelle.
EXAM
The final exam will include three questions pertaining to the
course and the required
readings. One question will be directly on one of the required
readings. They are to be in
answered in two hours (1 page per question). It will be a closed
book exam, except for one
dictionary. The questions can be answered either in French or in
English.
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GRADING OF THE EXAM:Each question counts for 33% of the
grade.
The answer to each question will be evaluated as follows:
- The questions will require theoretical and factual knowledge
of the elements seenthroughout the course and readings (33%).
- To answer you will need to make use of your analytical skills,
the ability to take acritical distance, to put into perspective, to
abstract from acquired knowledge
(33%).
Finally, you will have to demonstrate your academic writing
skills, your capacity to
use relevant terminology and bring forward a line of
argumentation in a convincing,
clear and structured way (33%).
Outline, class-schedule, required readings (provisional)
1/ Introduction: On security practices and political
violence
I - War & Organized Violence in Historical Perspective
2/ The birth of warfare: war-making and state-making in the
western trajectory
- Required reading: TILLY (Charles) War Making and State Making
as OrganizedCrime in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Theda
Skocpol (eds) Bringing the
State Back In , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985,
p.169-187
3/ Beyond the West: the example of organized violence in the
Iraqi trajectory
4/ What is non-state violence? The example of the Afghan
conflicts
- Required readings: Chapter 11 in DORRONSORO (Gilles)
Revolution Unending:1979 to the Present, London: Hurst & Co,
2005
5/ The transformations of warfare
- Required reading: HOLSTI (Kalevi J), The State, War and the
State of War, Cam-bridge: CUP, 2001. Chapter 3 Wars of the 3
rdKind; p.19-40
II - Security practices in Sociological Perspective
6/ The professionals of security
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7/ The transformation of contemporary security practices:
between war and globalpolicing?
- Required reading: Chapter 3: The changing norm of humanitarian
intervention inFINNEMORE (Martha) The Purpose of Intervention,
Changing beliefs on the purpose
of force, London: Cornell University Press, 2003
08/ Privatized coercion: from mercenarism to private military
companies
- Required reading: AVANT (Deborah D.), The Market for force :
the consequences ofprivatising security, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 2005 (Introduction)
09/ General Conclusions
Indicative Course bibliography
- BOURDIEU (Piere) Practical Reason. On the theory of action,
Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press
- BULL (Hedley), The Anarchical Society, London Macmillan, 1977-
CREVELD (Martin van) The Rise and Decline of the State, Cambridge:
Cambridge
University Press, 1999
- ELIAS (Norbert) The Civilizing Process, Vol.I. The History of
Manners, Oxford:Blackwell, 1969, and The Civilizing Process,
Vol.II. State Formation and Civilization,
Oxford: Blackwell, 1982
- FOUCAULT (Michel) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at
the Collge deFrance 1977-78, New York: Picador, 2007
- GIDDENS (Anthony) The Nation State and Violence. Volume Two of
A ContemporaryCritique of Historical Materialism. Cambridge: Polity
(1985)
- HOBDEN (Stephen), HOBSON (John M.), Historical Sociology of
InternationalRelations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002
- HOBDEN (Stephen), International Relations and Historical
Sociology: breakingdown boundaries, London: Routledge, 1998
-
HOLSTI (Kalevi J.), The State, War and the State of War,
Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996
- HOWARD (Michael), The Invention of Peace and the re-invention
of War :Reflections on War and International Order, London: Profile
Books, 2000
- MALESEVIC (Sinisa) The Sociology of War and Violence,
Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2010
- PERCY (Sarah) Mercenaries: the History of a Norm in
International Relations,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007;
- THOMPSON (Janice E.), Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns,
State-building andExtra-territorial Violence in Early Modern
Europe, Princeton, Princeton University
Press, 1994
- TILLY (Charles) Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD
990-1992, Oxford:Blackwell, 1990
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- WEBER (Max)Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive
Sociology, Berkeley:University of California Press, 1978.
