Why Humans Fight: The Social Dynamics of Close-Range Violence

Book description: Malešević offers a novel sociological answer to the age-old question: 'Why do humans fight?'. Instead of focusing on the motivations of solitary individuals, he emphasises the centrality of the social and historical contexts that make fighting possible. He argues that fighting is not an individual attribute, but a social phenomenon shaped by one's relationships with other people. Drawing on recent scholarship across a variety of academic disciplines as well as his own interviews with the former combatants, Malešević shows that one's willingness to fight is a contextual phenomenon shaped by specific ideological and organisational logic. This book explores the role biology, psychology, economics, ideology, and coercion play in one's experience of fighting, emphasising the cultural and historical variability of combativeness. By drawing from numerous historical and contemporary examples from all over the world, Malešević demonstrates how social pugnacity is a relational and contextual phenomenon that possesses autonomous features.

Siniša Malešević is Professor of Sociology at the University College, Dublin, and Senior Fellow at CNAM, Paris. His recent books include Contemporary Sociological Theory (with S. Loyal, 2021), Grounded Nationalisms (2019), The Rise of Organised Brutality (2017) and Nation-States and Nationalisms (2013). His work has been translated into 13 languages.

Friday March 15th, 2024, from 12:00 till 2:00 pm
Université libre de Bruxelles
Campus du Solbosch – IEE Geremek Room
39 Avenue Franklin Roosevelt
1050 Bruxelles

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Cambridge University Press