War & Society, Centeno, Miguel A. and Elaine Enriquez. (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2016).

Abstract

A bumper sticker on many cars in college and university parking lots proclaims: “WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER.” Most American students and faculty spend their entire time at university without thinking about war, except that they want to avoid it at all cost. Miguel Centeno, the Musgrave Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University, and Elaine Enriquez, a research fellow also at Princeton, argue that war has been a normal part of human existence since time immemorial and that it deserves to be studied as a sociopolitical phenomenon in its own right. The authors employ a longue durée comparative approach to demonstrate how war has been responsible for some of humankind’s fundamental institutions and practices, and thus must not be condemned as immoral, irrational, stupid, or evil. War has a history of its own that deserves serious study.

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Notes on contributors

Walter C. Opello

Walter C. Opello, Jr. is Emeritus Professor of political science at the State University of New York at Oswego. Since his retirement in 2015 he has been an associated researcher at the Center d’étude des crises et des conflits internationaux (CECRI), as well as the 2017–2018 André Molitor Visiting Professor, Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication (ESPO), Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. His latest book is War, Armed Force, and the People: State Formation and Transformation in Historical Perspective (2016). E-mail: [email protected]