Criminology and War

Transgressing the Borders

Sandra Walklate, Ross McGarry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780415722155
• eBook ISBN: 9781317936671
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

It is widely observed that the study of war has been paid limited attention within criminology. This is intellectually curious given that acts of war have occurred persistently throughout history and perpetuate criminal acts, victimisation and human rights violations on a scale unprecedented with domestic levels of crime. However, there are authoritative voices within criminology who have been studying war from the borders of the discipline.

This book contains a selection of criminological authors who have been authoritatively engaged in studying criminology and war. Following an introduction that 'places war within criminology' the collection is arranged across three themed sections including: Theorising War, Law and Crime; Linking War and Criminal Justice; and War, Sexual Violence and Visual Trauma. Each chapter takes substantive topics within criminology and victimology (i.e. corporate crime, history, imprisonment, criminal justice, sexual violence, trauma, security and crime control to name but a few) and invites the reader to engage in critical discussions relating to wars both past and present.

The chapters within this collection are theoretically rich, empirically diverse and come together to create the first authoritative published collection of original essays specifically dedicated to criminology and war. Students and researchers alike interested in war, critical criminology and victimology will find this an accessible study companion that centres the disparate criminological attention to war into one comprehensive collection.

Part 1

Theorising war, law and crime

1 War and the death of achilles

Vincenzo Ruggiero

Introduction

War does not sit comfortably among the topics attracting criminological enquiry. In the first section of this chapter an attempt is made to identify why this is so. The suggestion is then put forward that only a criminology refusing official definitions of what the object of its study should be is capable of including this extreme form of organized violence within its analytical interests. The description of some of the features making war criminologically relevant and its analysis urgent forms the second section of this contribution.

Instincts and foundational events

Common, and often unchallenged, notions of war convey positive values, making violent conflicts among states foundational events, markers of the boundaries between barbarianism and civilization. War is assumed to establish ‘just’ hierarchies and allocate deserved ranks: a necessary evil. It is a regenerative event nevertheless, shaping the world and triggering transformation. Moreover, war appears to belong to the divine sphere, as it generates social and institutional forms through a sort of theomachy, a sacred fight which brings destruction while creating something new. In brief, war is the expression of supreme forms of interaction, and a crucial factor for the constitution of identities (Curi, 2002; Ruggiero, 2006).

Religious thought is commonly referred to when the boundaries between just and unjust wars are drawn (Walzer, 2006). Thomas Aquinas, for instance, laid down three conditions guiding the jus ad bellum: the right to wield war had to be exercised by a legitimate authority, in the name of a just cause and with the intention of remedying an injustice. Enemies were ‘just’ targets because of their evil acts. In ancient Greece and Rome there was a strong link between military organization and political system: army members belonged to the political community (Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, 2011). It is, however, in Rome that the religious element left a remarkable trace, particularly in the distinction between bellum hostile, war between Christian knights, and bellum romanum, war waged against outsiders, infidels, barbarians or insurgent peasants. The former was conducted according to chivalric code and followed strict rules, while the latter was lawless, endless (Lindqvist, 2012).

In secular thinking, however, war was not only legitimized, but also at times encouraged. A prince, warned Machiavelli (1944: 111), ought to have no other aim or thought than war and its rules and discipline: ‘when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have lost their states’. The stability of political systems, in other words, depends on the capacity to accumulate armaments, whereas being unarmed brings ignominy and contempt on rulers. Even in time of peace, a prince is advised to bear nothing in mind but the rules of war: to increase ‘his resources in such a way that they might be available to him in adversity, so that if fortune changes it may find him prepared to resist her blows’ (Machiavelli, 1944: 114). Machiavelli was inspired by Greek philosophy, which in several respects saw war as the original principle of the state itself, an event marking the passage from the primitive ‘state of pigs’ to the advanced state of luxury. From that philosophy we learn that the instinct of pugnacity is a constant component of humankind, not a survival from brutal ancestry, and cannot be eradicated. In fact, its operation is far from being wholly injurious; on the contrary, it is one of the essential factors in the evolution of higher forms of social organization (McDougall, 1915).

This legacy could still be detected in the medieval city, whose crystallization was due less to trade than to war. ‘The city is the result of war, at least of preparation for war’, commerce came afterwards. Cities were fortified and hosted the manufacture of weaponry; the space of the city overlapped with the space of war: this was the beginning of the economy of war, ‘which eventually became simply the economy’ (Virilio and Lotringer, 1997: 11). Against religious arguments in support of just war as saintly triumph over infidels and heretics, medieval just war theorists treated violent conflict less as a means to punish religious deviants and social criminals than as an initiative to acquire property (Russell, 1975). War was, therefore, a form of civil litigation, a way of settling property disputes.

Victory was a legitimate mode of natural means of acquisition, which conferred enforceable property rights on the victor: rights to territory for commanders, and rights to booty for ordinary soldiers. Just war theory was largely property law.

(Whitman, 2012: 18)

Private interests, however, were concealed behind the noble principle of ‘the verdict of history’, whereby the outcome of war ceased to be determined by ability or fortune, entering the realm of destiny. Nobility, later, became the main characteristic of eighteenth-century war thanks to the cultural domination of duelling aristocracy, deemed courteous and inherently chivalric. As Nietzsche (1968) remarked, the noble managed to be appreciated as the truthful ones, therefore as those holding the privilege of exercising legitimate violence.

That war retains a form of human nobility was pointed out, again by Nietzsche, in his axiomatic depiction of human instincts, epitomized by the ‘blonde beast’, the wild animal lying inside the human race, avid of prey and victory. But also, obliquely, by Freud (1959), who saw no antimony between ‘violence’ and ‘right’, violence being the variable allowing the designation of power, therefore of the right to govern. Original violence, in his view, is the force of a state expressed in its laws. Moreover, war and violence are the result of an active instinct for hatred and destruction, an instinct cohabiting the humans together with its opposite, namely ‘eros’, which aims at conserving and unifying. Love and hate are akin to those eternal polarities, attraction and repulsion, which fall within the field of study of the physical sciences, and Freud concluded that both instincts are indispensable: all the phenomena of life derive from their activity; whether they work in concert or in opposition, each is blended with a certain dosage of its opposite.

Criminology has never shown an interest in the formation of the right to govern, but in its opposite, namely conduct undermining the smooth governing of social and political systems. Nor has it been attracted to the study of ‘indispensable’ instincts governing life itself. On the other hand, some analytical interest in war, perhaps, might have been obtained from its, at least initial, proximity to social theory and sociology.

Industrial societies and creative periods

Classical sociology adopts an optimistic, evolutionist perspective on the subject matter. War is described as a barbaric relic, a sort of relapse of civilized societies into retrograde cultural stages. Development through trade and industry, it is assumed, will cause inevitable pacifying effects (Joas and Knöbl, 2013). The example of Auguste Comte (1953) is, in this respect, significant. Military societies and industrial societies are said to represent two fundamentally different types of social organization. The predominance of the latter type is destined to diminish warfare, which is essentially connected with the predominance of the former. The argument is put forward that there is a fundamental antithesis between military civilization and the civilization of labour, between the spirit of conquest and the spirit of industry. In an ideal evolution, first, industry is seen as being in the service of war, then war is regarded as being in the service of industry and, finally, in the ultimate form of society, peace is deemed the inevitable outcome of industry (Aron, 1958). True, Comte was proved wrong in his prediction that last century would be free from war, but it is controversial whether he is equally wrong in foreseeing that the only kind of conceivable future war would aim to directly establish the material ‘preponderance of more advanced over less advanced populations’. Comte resolutely condemned such potential wars, because they are likely to cause the mutual oppression of nations and to ‘precipitate various countries upon one another’. It remains unclear, however, whether Comte regarded these potential wars as part of a tendency within industrial societies or whether he was convinced that the very process of industrialization would impede their occurrence. In his belief that war has no space in the evolution of ‘labour civilization’, however, one could detect an implicit critique of views holding the biological, innate character of war itself.

The concepts of ‘collective effervescence’ and that of ‘creative periods’ are crucial for a sociological analysis of war. Both introduced by Durkheim (1970), these concepts allude to communities experiencing magical moments, when individuals transcend themselves and prefigure a higher collective order. Collective effervescence leads individuals to integration into a superior unit, as the experience of action results in moments of communion: ‘emotional effusions of selflessness are engendered automatically whenever people are put into closer and more active relations with one another’ (Peterson, 2001: 57). By acting above and beyond themselves, in concrete social practices, individuals achieve a form of solidarity typifying what Durkheim termed ‘creative periods’. While new values are elaborated and egotistical interests are provisionally set aside, these periods, evanescent though they may be, remain in the memory of the collectivity as periods of supreme integration. Countries at war are typical entities experiencing such creative periods, when solidarity allegedly spreads or intensifies, and when collective efforts become paramount. Such countries, indeed, will then build a vivid memory of themselves, a sense of their uniqueness and special identity which will survive well after the end of hostilities.

Durkheim’s analysis echoes a Kantian idea, for even in his manifesto for a perpetual peace the German philosopher, while spiritually recoiling from the horror of war, is led by his practical reason to appreciate its functions. On the one hand, Kant points to the ills suffered by humanity due to the incessant preparations in view of future wars, which require enormous waste of economic and cultural resources. On the other hand, he argues that, without such pressure and permanent urgency, societies would equally suffer.

In other words, it is the constant horizon of war that maintains state and social, community and cultural cohesion, and it is the same horizon that ensures a degree of freedom, in spite of restrictive laws.

(Derrida, 2011: 375)

In brief, cultural achievement by the human species still finds in war an indispensable means of perfecting it, despite the ‘commodification’ of countries and persons that every war entails (Kant, 1970).

There is nothing, in the brief outline above, that would justify the interest of criminology in such a ‘functional’ phenomenon.

Development and the power elite

The contribution of the Chicago sociologists on the subject matter is ambivalent, and it remains obscure why their particular sensitivity with respect to social exclusion, along with their active intervention in communities and ghettoes, is not translated into a similar degree of sensitivity vis-àvis international matters. Park (1941) likens war to its ancestors, namely the judicial procedure known as trial by combat or the duel, though he is unsure whether to regard it as a social institution or as a biological necessity. The latter hypothesis seems to be validated, he muses, if one considers that war has always been one of the available ways of making claims and settling disputes. War must, therefore, be an innate human enterprise, if it still constitutes a form of litigation by which states make their claims valid. Park (1941) notes, however, that limits need to be imposed on such innate behaviour and that an understanding of the consequences of unrestricted warfare should be reached. He claims to be in favour of the technical limits drawn by international agencies trying to make war more consistent with ‘the requirements of humanity’. On the other hand, he argues that all attempts to regulate wars and govern military conducts may simply result in legitimizing both and conferring a respectable institutional character on them. Legitimacy, moreover, belongs to authorities and institutions whose actions and their effects are predicable, whereas ‘we do not know what to expect of war any more’ (Park, 1941: 562). In a further attempt to identify the nature of war and its function, Park (1941) reiterates the adage that war is politics in its original form, through which belligerent states or parties seek to extend the territorial limits of their sovereignty and establish their own political and economic order. The victorious party will, of course, impose its own racial or national interest, and will attempt to build up an ideology that rationalizes the acceptance of its superiority and of the social order imposed upon the vanquished.

Park’s (1952; 1960) critical remarks express a sense of impotence and inevitability in the face of processes leading advanced social and economic orders to impose themselves on other systems. He is faced with the Comteian dilemma as to whether the potential wars waged by more mature systems, though condemnable, are perhaps destined to loom as perennial threats during the course of human evolution. Since unequal development is a permanent feature of the history of the international community, and given that aggression by more developed nations is always a possibility, does this mean that war is indeed an immutable trait of human bevahiour? War, in this way, becomes a price to be paid for global development and its alleged corollary of generalized social advancement (Ruggiero, 2006). It should be noted that similar uncritical trust in economic growth as social advancement is found in numerous fields of knowledge, including criminology, which often looks to sheer developments in the economy as a miraculous crime prevention remedy.

Wright Mills (1956: 184) focuses less on war itself than on warlords. His notion of permanent emergency is referred to in the US international posture: ‘for the first time in American history men in authority are talking about emergency without a foreseeable end’. History, he remarks, was seen in the past as a peaceful continuum interrupted by war, whereas now the elite does not have any notion of peace, if not as an uneasy interlude, a tedious, precarious recess during which reasonable people and states had better spend the available time loading their pistols. During the eighteenth century civilians were able to control specialists of violence, but this ability began to falter during the following century among all industrialized countries. Wright Mills (1956) provides an initial micro-sociological explanation of this process, suggesting that neither patriotism nor pay were encouragements to undertake a military career; rather, it was the consideration and the chances of ‘laurels’. ‘Every man in the army is constantly aspiring to be something higher, as every citizen in the commonwealth is constantly struggling for a better rank’ (Wright Mills, 1956: 174). The race for prestige, however, found obstacles of an economic nature, as, in a country centrally preoccupied by the individual acquisition of wealth, people would not favour subsidizing an organized body mostly deemed parasitical. Military force, therefore, remained relatively decentralized in state militia, a system of armed citizens ‘at a time when the rifle was the key weapon and one man meant one rifle as well as one vote’ (Wright Mills, 1956: 178).

Throughout the twentieth century warlords slowly began to see the economic system as a means for military expansion and large companies as badly managed military establishments. With time, their increased stature arrived by default, due to the low stature of political and economic actors. Soon military personnel became ambassadors and special envoys and, in major international decisions, professional diplomats were simply by-passed. Later, military demands shaped and dictated the pace of corporate economy, the traffic between military and corporate personnel accelerated and shifted ‘American capitalism toward a permanent war economy’ (Wri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Contributors
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction: Placing war within criminology
• Part 1: Theorising war, law and crime
• Part 2: Linking war and criminal justice
• Part 3: War, sexual violence and visual trauma
• Postscript: From the criminalisation of war to the militarisation of crime control
• Index