Full Description
This edited book demonstrates a new multidimensional comprehension of the relationship between war, the military and civil society by exploring the global rise of paramilitary culture. Moving beyond binary understandings that inform the militarization of culture thesis and examining various national and cultural contexts, the collection outlines ways in which a process of paramilitarization is shaping the world through the promotion of new warrior archetypes. It is argued that while the paramilitary hero is associated with military themes, their character is in tension with the central principals of modern military organization, something that often challenges the state's perceived monopoly on violence. As such paramilitization has profound implications for institutional military identity, the influence of paramilitary organizations and broadly how organised violence is popularly understood
Contents
1 Introduction: Paramilitarization and the globalization of paramilitary culture.- Part 1 Projecting the post-heoric warrior in new popular cultural forms.- 2 Techniques of empathy and embodiment in the paramilitary film: Learning from The Hurt Locker.- 3 Press X to pay respects: Evolving depictions of war in Call of Duty and Battlefield.- 4 Re-narrating the paramilitary in the Colombian conflict: Examining the Medellin memory museum.- Part 2 Projecting the paramilitary warrior in practices of social memory.- 5 The social memory of the North Vietnamese soldier in Vietnam and United States popular culture.- 6 From nationalization to Islamization of the Ottoman Soldier at the Canakkale/Gallipoli WWI Battlefields.- 7 The Danish soldier reimagined: Civil religion and religion of the self in the post-9/11 era.- Part 3 Paramilitary, organisations and the advancement of paramilitary culture.- 8 Profession and identity: Warriors in the 21st Century.- 9 The poetics of paramilitarization: Hizbollah and the Shade of Resistance in Southern Lebanon.- 10 Firefights and the performance of occupational masculinity during downtime.
