caseschooloflaw
September 23, 2009
Speaker: Gordon Fellman, PhD, Professor of Sociology, Brandeis University
Sponsored by: Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Conflict and Dispute Resolution, Louis C. Greenwood Lecture
Summary: Professor Fellman will examine the standard justifications for war and show how each is lacking. War is a social invention and can be succeeded by peace, which is another social invention. He will discuss three reasons—two of them structural and one social psychological—that war persists in this era.
- One is the gains it means for those sectors of the economy that profit from selling the implements of war, servicing the war machine once it is in place, and reconstructing what has been destroyed in war.
- Second is the pervasiveness of normative masculinity (which he calls "traditional masculinity"). He claims that the warrior is the quintessence and culmination of the qualities of normative masculinity and try to show some of the contradictions and hidden problems there. He suggests how normative masculinity can be reconceived and reconstructed to value avoiding war above making war.
- The third element of the argument is social psychological. Anger is inadequately studied as a major problem in human affairs. It is likely that all societies redirect anger away from its real sources (in family, relationships, work, government, etc.) to substitute objects. Creating enemies and making war upon them is perhaps the most dramatic of these practices.
Prof. Fellman will then make a series of recommendations for how to move past war.
