Violence and Modernity: War

2. Social costs and scars of war (achievements?)

• As we have already seen the costs, scars and consequences of war are inseparable from its other aspects.

• We have been looking, for example at its interaction with the modern state. War is at the core of modern citizenship and the developing ideologies – especially nationalism – are geared to uniting people to fight. War is a, arguably the, main raison d’etre of the modern state.

Impacts associated with war

• economic development• Technological, medical and scientific

development• Cultural/psychological impact• Political manipulation• Social change (gender roles; weakens class)• Engenders revolutions• Destroys empires and economies

Impacts 1 Economic Development

• Victory can strengthen a country’s economic grip by defeating a rival – classic example is Britain vs France Seven Years’ War and beyond

• Imperialism and imperial state• War makes state a leading investor and/or

customer• War (and space) spending has a ‘Keynesian’ effect

on economy• ‘Military-industrial complex,

Impacts 2 Technological, medical and scientific development

Impacts 3 Cultural/psychological impact

• Enormous impact of war on culture high and low

• Goya and war painting from Napoleonic period

• From figurative to abstract art – music Tchaikovsky to Stravinsky– Painting - Kandinsky

Goya – Executions of the Third of May 1808

Goya Il Colosso

Goya from The Disasters of War

Salvador Dali Soft Construction

Robert Capa Death of a Loyalist Soldier 1936

Impacts 3 Cultural/psychological impact

• Enormous impact of war on culture high and low

• Goya and war painting from Napoleonic period

• From figurative to abstract art – music Tchaikovsky to Stravinsky– Painting - Kandinsky

Kandinsky 1908

Kandinsky 1912

Kandinsky 1912

Kandinsky 1919

Kandinsky 1923

War Movies

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz3Cc7wlfkI

Political Manipulation

• Chauvinistic military campaigns to influence elections(Falklands factor)French imperialism in N.AfricaBismarck

Social change

• gender roles; in mass warfare women move into ‘male’ civilian roles at work (what happens when the surviving men come back?)

• weakens class – ‘all in it together’

Rosie the Riveter (US WWII)

Ministry of Labour/ RoSPA UK 1943

British Women Workers WW2

Engenders Revolutions

• Russian Revolution

• Chinese Revolution – People’s Liberation Army, Long March, Yunan Period

Destroys Empires

Final Thought

• Wars rarely solve problems –

They transform one set of problems into a new, and often unpredictable, new set of problems.

1st WW ---- 2nd WW2nd WW ---- Cold War‘War on Terror’ ---- War on Radical Islam