War, Militarisation And Everyday Life
By Anayika Chopra
25 May, 2013
Countercurrents.org
It is conventional wisdom that sociologists have tended to neglect military concerns. In fact this is a somewhat misleading claim, since not only have numerous studies have taken the military as a substantive area of interest, but it is hard to see if anything is specifically sociological about militarism and war. Neveretheless, there have been studies on war and militarization and an attempt has been understand to gain a sociological understanding of them. Before understanding how militarization shapes everyday practices and ways of living, it is essential to comprehend the meaning of the term militarization. The term militarization has been drawn from the word ‘War’. Now the question that comes to my mind is What is a war?, How to we define wars? These and many similar related questions have been posed as well as explored by sociologists and anthropologists. One such scholar is Etienne Balibar. In his work, Balibar(2008) has explored the idea of war in great detail. Firstly he points out that in order to categorise an act of violence as ‘war’, the process of naming gains significance.“ Wars are named: they have to be. Most of the times they are named after the event, by historians, which means in particular that they are named when they are considered to be finished, to have been brought to an end”(Balibar 2008:367). Not only is the question of naming is important but also questions related to subjects of the war, questions of identities are also significant when trying to understand war. Now coming to the term militarization, militarization may be defined as “the contradictory and tense social process in which civil society organizes itself for the production of violence” (Geyer 1989:79). But this definition is not the only one which encompasses all the dimensions within evethe term militarization. Scholars such as Lutz(2001) has said that “ militarization encompasses a range of discursive and material processes through which societies prepare for war, and has become pervasive in the lives of contemporary national security states, spinning out through multiple related institutional domains-political, economic, juridical and familial-there by intersecting with the existing social inequalities and cultural tensions and impacting combatants as well as noncombatants who are not otherwise caught up in military endeavors and preparedness routines. These persisting patterns of militarization are predicated on, and justified through, ideological logics of order and disorder, and insurgency and counter-insurgency that further glorify and legitimate military action”(Lutz 2002:723).
From the above definitions one gets a sense how war and militarization are inter-linked. Also the word militarization is a broad time and entails diverse meanings.
The present paper will make an attempt to explore how militarization helps is shaping everyday practices and ways of living by taking the examples of two specific South Asian Cases. The paper will also shed light on how militarization plays an important role in transforming the geographical and social landscape, gender and kinship relations.
The first case is the case of Kashmir where the legal civil war is still going. Haley Dushchinki in his article titled “Destiny Effects: Militarisation, State Power, and Punitive Containment in Kashmir Valley has pointed out how militarization of the everyday life eliminates those segments of the population identified as threats of the national order and as prisoners of the state. Militarisation in the name of national security produces everyday life. “The parameters of militarization in Jammu and Kashmir are established by a series of emergency provisions, mostly the Armed Forces Special Power Act of 1990”(Duschinksi 2009:701). The AFSPA, through the nature of the power that it confers upon itself helps in establishing conditions of a legal civil power against the civilian population in Kashmir. The law is such that the security forces can anytime enter the person’s house, shoot him and destroy his property. The life of the people is controlled is controlled by these forces as well as the state. This becomes an ‘everyday’ affair, it becomes a part of people’s life. Since this happens with everyone it helps in producing a sense of ‘community’ among the civilians. The community is produced as Kashmiri’s are transformed into enemies. “The pervasive presence of Indian security forces in every aspect of life produces a collective experience of being under siege” (Duschinksi 2009:705). War and militarization also effect the landscape and this is also evident in the case of Kashmir as the whole of Kashmir Valley is mapped by various stations of state violence such as cantonments, barracks , interrogation centers, lock ups. For the Kashmiris their encounters with the military and paramilitary forces are pervasive features of everyday life. One of such encounters involves I- cards, which have a person’s name, locality and even his occupation and the individual needs to carry this with him everywhere. One can say that the Kashmiris are subjected to measures of surveillance and these measures have certainly become a part of their normal functioning of life. It seems evident from this case that how militarization helps in shaping everyday practices and ways of living.
Coming to another very significant South Asian case which is the case of Nepal and the Maoist Insurgency. This case has been discussed by Judith Pettigrew in his work titled “Guns, Kinship and fear :Maoists among the Tamu-mai (Gurungs). This case is somewhat different as here the war is in the preliminary stages or one can say that it is a pre-conflict zone. But this does not mean that one cannot see the effects of militarization happening. One can definitely see the transformations and the changes happening in the everyday life of the people in Nepal as a result of Maoist insurgency. One generally thinks that militarization is from the state but in this particular case we see how militarization results from the activities of Maoist groups.The paper primarily focuses on Maoists activity in the districts of Kaski and Lamjung. As stated the Maoists generally inhabited the forests, which was the ecological zone between the villages and uplands. The threat of any encounter with the Maoist restricted the activities of the villagers. The village that was considered as a ‘safe’ place now began to be considered unsafe. “The spatial landscape is being drawn and the boundaries between the safety of the village and the danger of the forests are becoming more diffuse” (Pettigrew 2002:309). This shows how the presence of Maobadi helped in reconfiguring the spatial landscape and with this change in the spatial landscape a consequent change in the social landscape also started taking place. By this one means that the youth as well as the women started getting more actively involved in Maoist activities. So one can say that gender relations started getting transformed and this had an affect on the everyday life of the people and it certainly affected their way of living. “Maoist women construct a different notion of movement and relatedness, which combine to challenge received ideas about female personhood. The images of women with guns subvert usual notions of martiality and gender”(Pettigrew 2002:321). Also an important way in which militarization has affected the way of living is that it has affected the relations between kinship, gender and age. “ As social and spatial boundaries are reconfigured, the village is in danger of becoming as much a ‘jungle’ as the forest and frightened villagers are left to wonder what they can do to deal with such unprecedented threats” (Pettigrew 2008:322). This case also attempts to show how the repeated encounters of the Tamu villagers with the Maoist affected their way of living.
The two South Asian cases demonstrate to us that how militarization helps in shaping the everyday practices and way of living. But there are some variations in the two cases. The very first difference is in the setting – militarization in Kashmir is resulting from the ongoing civil war, while in the case of Nepal one can say that the war has not started but is the pre-liminary stages. Also in the case of Kashmir, militarization is from the State while in the Nepal case it results from the actions of a particular group of individuals- Maoist. In both the cases there is a transformation of landscape but in the Nepal case with the spatial transformation there is a transformation in the gender, kinship relations. Also the involvement of women and youth in military activities signals that there is a difference in the way militarization has shaped their way of living in both the cases. On the basis of the cases stated above can one say that militarization has positive as well as negative outcomes? Is there something as ‘positive militarisation’ and ‘negative militarisation’? Or can one say that the process of militarization entails within it a positive aspect? One thing however seems clear that militarization especially in the case of Kashmir helped to ‘normalise’ acts of violence. Since the war is still going on in Kashmir and the militarization has practically affected all the spheres of life people have become accustomed to these acts of violence. These acts of violence by the military have become engrained in the ‘routine’ and ‘everyday’ life of the people. Lastly one should take into account the socio-historical aspects of a particular case when trying to understand war and militarization. The notion of time gains significance here. One should never rule the dimension of time.
Anayika Chopra , M.A.Sociology, South Asian University
References:
Geyer,Michael . 1989. ‘The Militarisation of Europe, 1941-1945’.In John Gills, ed. The Militarisation of the Western World, pp.65-102. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press
Lutz, Catherine. 2002. ‘ Making War at Home in the United States: Militarisation and the Current Crisis’. American Anthropologists 104(3): 723-35
Balibar, Etienne. 2008. ‘What is a War?’, Ratio Juris Vol 21(3) – 365-386
Duschinski, Haley. 2009. ‘ Destiny Effects: Militarisation , State Power, and Punitive Containment in Kashmir Valley’. Anthropological Quarterly Vol 82(3) -619-717
Pettigrew.Judith. 2008. ‘ Guns,Kinship and Fear:Maoists among the Tamu-mai (Gurungs)’. In Gellner,D. ed. Resistance and the State: The Nepalese Experience,pp 305-325
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