Arrangement

“Under the banner of martial empiricism, this paper advances a distinctive set of theoretical and methodological commitments for the study of war. Previous efforts to wrestle with this mosa recalcitrant of phenomena have sought to ground research upon primary definitions or foundational ontologies of war. By contrast, we propose to embrace war's incessant becoming, making its creativity, mutability, and polyvalence central to our enquiry.

Beginning from the position that war's essence is unknowable, we draw on a tradition of radical empiricism to devise a conceptual and contextual mod of enquiry that can follow the processes and operations of war wherever they lead us. Moving beyond the instrumental appropriations of strategic thought and the normative strictures typical of critical approaches, martial empiricism calls for an unbounded investigation into the emergent and generative character of war. Assembling a corpus germane to the endeavour of exploring war from the inside-out, we outline three domains around which to orient future research: mobilization, design, and experience.

In an age in which war's activities have become increasingly volatile and promiscuous, martial empiricism is no idle exercise in philosophical speculation. It is the promise of a research dagsorden apposite to the task of fully contending with the momentous possibilities and dangers of war in our time.”

Dette skriv Antoine Bousquet som bakgrunn til artikkelen sin Becoming War: Towards a Martial Empiricism. Bousquet er Reader in International Relations ved Birkbeck College, University of London. Han er forfattar av boka The Eye of War: Military Perception from the Telescope to the Drone og The Scientific Way of Warfare: Ordar and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity. Han har også gjort mange viktige forskingsbidrag, blant anna om militære anliggande, databehandling under den kalde krigen, jihadisdiske nettverk, kompleksitetsteori, og konseptualisering av krig.

Teoriseminaret blir leidd av NUPI-forskar Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud.

Etter seminaret vil det vere mogleg å kjøpe boka for 200 kroner.