This sociological study considers war and peace as systems, with states and proto-states as social actors. It then considers the relationship between war and other social institutions. Chapters discuss theoretical models of war and peace, international law, the contemporary war system, the origins of modern military organization, modern military organization and culture, military success and failure, the social effects of war, peace projects, peacekeeping organizations, and arms control. The appendix contains analyses of particular wars. Caplow teaches sociology at the University of Virginia. Hicks teaches sociology at St. Mary's College of Maryland. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

While focusing on social thought, this book draws on many disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, and political science. It demonstrates the profound difficulties social thinkers - including liberals, socialists, and those intellectuals who could be regarded as the sociologists - had in coming to terms with the phenomenon of war.

For the last thirty years Somalia has experienced violence and upheaval. Today, the international effort to help Somalis build a federal state and achieve stability is challenged by deep-rooted grievances, local conflicts and a powerful insurgency led by Al-Shabaab. Consisting of forty-four chapters by conflict resolution specialists and the world's leading experts on Somalia, this volume constitutes a unique compendium of insights into the insurgency and its impact. War and Peace in Somalia explores the legacies of past violence, especially impunity, illegitimacy and exclusion, and the need for national reconciliation. Drawing on decades of experience and months of field research, the contributors throw light on diverse forms of local conflict, its interrelated causes, and what can be done about it. They share original research on the role of women, men and youth in the conflict, and present new insight into Al-Shabaab--particularly the group's multi-dimensional strategy, the motivations of its fighters, their foreign links, and the prospects for engagement. This ground-breaking volume illuminates the war in Somalia, and sets out what can and should be done to bring it to an end. For policymakers and researchers covering Somalia, East Africa, extremism or conflict resolution, this is a must-read.

Signs of War and Peace focuses on the role public display plays in the conflict in Northern Ireland. In doing so, it ranges freely over other times, places, and events that shed light on the social and political processes and dynamics involved in public display traditions, such as the Saint Patrick's Day parades in Boston, Massachusetts, and the popular spontaneous shrines to Lady Diana in London. The book is about the nature of public display, its relationships to class-based aesthetics, tradition, and popular style. It is also about contest, conflict, and civil war, and the ways the former are intimately intertwined with the latter, both in Northern Ireland and elsewhere throughout the world. The work is interdisciplinary, combining ethnographic, anthropological, folkloristic, and performance studies approaches. The manuscript benefits from large amount of field work in Ireland, and as a result contains both ethnographic data and revealing interviews with many people in Northern Ireland who have participated in the display events Santino seeks to analyze. The perspective that Santino offers helps to explain the intensity of the conflict as well as the origination, motivations, and justifications of bonfires, murals, commemorative displays, parades, etc. that symbolically articulate what he terms the 'dual master narratives' that underlie and in many ways help to articulate the parameters of that conflict.

Introducing students to the scientific study of peace and war, this exciting new reader provides an overview of important and current scholarship in this dynamic area of study. Focusing on the factors that shape relationships between countries and that make war or peace more likely, this collection of articles by top scholars explores such key topics as dangerous dyads, alliances, territorial disputes, rivalry, arms races, democratic peace, trade, international organizations, territorial peace, and nuclear weapons. Each article is followed by the editors’ commentary: a "Major Contributions" section highlights the article’s theoretical advances and relates each study to the broader literature, while a "Methodological Notes" section carefully walks students through the techniques used in the analysis. Methodological topics include research design, percentages, probabilities, odds ratios, statistical significance, levels of analysis, selection bias, logit, duration models, and game theory models.