Twenty-First Century Militarism: A Historical-Sociological Framework

I have contributed a chapter, ‘Twenty-First Century Militarism: A Historical-Sociological Framework’, to Militarism and International Relations: Political economy, security, theory, edited by my Sussex colleagues Anna Stavrianakis and Jan Selby, and published by Routledge in the Cass Military Studies series. The book contains 12 chapters grouped under Theorising militarism, Militarism and security, and The political economy of militarism, with strong coverage of a range of thematic and area issues by authors with varied theoretical perspectives.

My chapter reviews the historical vicissitudes of the concept of militarism, its emergence in the 1980s and the strengths and weaknesses of the work done on it in that period, outlines a historical-sociological framework and a theory of recent historical change in militarism, and concludes with reflections on militarism in the era of global surveillance war. An earlier draft of this chapter can be found here.