Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-jwnkl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T04:42:08.147Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - The police of civilisation: war as civilising offensive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

Mark Neocleous
Mark Neocleous
Affiliation:
Brunel University, UK
Get access

Summary

What they could do with round here is a good war. What else can you expect with peace running wild all over the place? You know what the trouble with peace is? No organization. And when do you get organization? In war … How many horses have they got in this town? How many young men? Nobody knows! They haven't bothered to count ‘em! That's peace for you! I've been in places where they haven't had a war for seventy years and you know what? The people haven't even been given names! They don't know who they are! It takes war to fix that. In war, everyone registers, everyone's name's on a list. Their shoes are stacked, their corn's in the bag, you count it all up – cattle, men, Et cetera – and you take it away! That's the story: no war, no order!

Brecht, Mother Courage (1939)

Civilisation is back. The ‘war on terror’ is said be about many things: ‘freedom, democracy, and free enterprise’, as the US National Security Strategy of 2002 puts it. Or, as found in other quarters, ‘values’, ‘civil society’, ‘the rule of law’, ‘way of life’, even the return of ‘real men’ as we saw in the previous chapter. A regular item on such lists is ‘civilisation’. This view is found far and wide and in a variety of discursive forms.

Type
Chapter
Information
War Power, Police Power , pp. 121 - 137
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×