With Siniša Malešević, University College Dublin, MSH visiting professor and Christian Olsson, REPI ULB (moderation)

A collaboration with the REPI

Book description: Malešević offers a novel sociological answer to the age-old question: 'Why do humans fight?'. Instead of focusing on the motivations of solitary individuals, he emphasises the centrality of the social and historical contexts that make fighting possible. He argues that fighting is not an individual attribute, but a social phenomenon shaped by one's relationships with other people. Drawing on recent scholarship across a variety of academic disciplines as well as his own interviews with the former combatants, Malešević shows that one's willingness to fight is a contextual phenomenon shaped by specific ideological and organisational logic. This book explores the role biology, psychology, economics, ideology, and coercion play in one's experience of fighting, emphasising the cultural and historical variability of combativeness. By drawing from numerous historical and contemporary examples from all over the world, Malešević demonstrates how social pugnacity is a relational and contextual phenomenon that possesses autonomous features.

Siniša Malešević is Professor of Sociology at the University College, Dublin, and Senior Fellow at CNAM, Paris. His recent books include Contemporary Sociological Theory (with S. Loyal, 2021), Grounded Nationalisms (2019), The Rise of Organised Brutality (2017) and Nation-States and Nationalisms (2013). His work has been translated into 13 languages.

Friday 15th March 2024, 12pm - 2pm

Salle Kant
Institut d'Études Européennes
Avenue F. Roosevelt 39
1000 Bruxelles

Compulsory registration : here

Contact : Claire-Constance de Lannoy