New War: An Ethnographic Approach

This chapter introduces a set of essays by anthropologists who have lived with and through the wars they describe over a number of years, reflecting an assumption that to understand war, we must first deny it special status. These essays try to avoid quarantining war as solely a matter for security specialists and try instead to grasp its character as but one among many different phases or aspects of social reality. This introduction, and the collection as a whole, attempt to analyze the various social agents by which war is organized.