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What Have We Learned from the Wars of the Twentieth Century?
- University of Massachusetts Press
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19 What Have We Learned from the Wars of the Twentieth Century? WINSTON LANGLEY With the dawn of a new millennium, few areas of human enquiry and re- flection can rival, in moral and social importance, the lessons we have learned from the social scourge we call war. My focus here has a central theme (with subthemes ) that has been examined before, but that theme has frequently been largely confined in its application to intranational conflicts and has even more often been burdened with a limiting definition. The theme or concept is that of relative deprivation, soon to be defined and discussed . My thesis is that the wars of the twentieth century, both the civil and the international kind, have been caused by relative deprivation and its associated twin, the “othering” of human groupings. We will seek to advance proof for this claim by defining relative deprivation and the context within which that definition is being used; by examining the relationship between the concept and the idea of “extinction”—an idea that has not generally been explored; by discussing what we mean by “othering”; and by reviewing a few wars that have defined the twentieth century.Followingallthesediscussions,wewilltouchonanotherlessonthat,though not brought to us by the wars we will have discussed, has been partly informed by them in shaping the prominent place that lesson has begun to occupy in our lives. Relative deprivation I understand to mean the actual or presumed existence of a discrepancy between one’s “life conditions,” including the goods and other values that define one, and the value expectations one has, including that to which one feels entitled, by virtue of one’s self-assessed or other-ascribed capabilities. In other words, there is a felt contradiction or incongruity between what one believes one is entitled to and what one actually has.1 Two elements, the first expressed, the other implied, must be immediately dealt with, if we are to progress in an orderly manner with our definition. The term one, as used above, refers to all self-conscious human groupings— ethnic, national, racial, social, and religious, among others. But in our discussions, we will emphasize the nation-state, giving due weight to its ethnic, religious, racial , social, and other components. The implied element encompasses the phenomenon of change—a sociological phenomenon not frequently discussed in this context. Were it not for this notion of change (and to an extent the idea of “progress ” that modernism has associated with it), the meaning and significance of relative deprivation might not have become so clear in its operation. 20 UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD AS WE HAVE KNOWN IT Change, among other things, means that one’s position and condition in life need not last forever; that one’s status, cause, or direction can be altered; and that such alteration might even include a radical transformation of or substitution for that which pre-existed. Since a change in status, direction, or cause can affect the self that interacts with the change, it means that even the self (or one’s sense of self) might be transformed. In some societies (be they familial, tribal, national, or international), changes take place with a minimum of politically organized violence ; in other societies, violence is pervasive. For us here the focus is primarily on international society. Any discussion of international society, however, must properly begin with the ideological outlook (nationalism) out of which the nation-state has arisen. That ideology, perhaps the most powerful humans have ever experienced, originated in the West and has expanded throughout the world. In its description of and justification for the nation-state, it has claimed that humanity is naturally divided into psycho-cultural entities called nations; that people constituting a nation should enjoy the right to national self-determination; that this right is best expressed through the attainment of sovereign status (becoming a nation-state); and that the nation-state, in interstate relations, is the ideal, when compared with other models of the state such as the city-state and the empire-state. The latter claim is usually made in light of the “fact” that the nation is said to offer security not only in the military sense but also in the social and psychological sense that people gain a sense of wider belonging among people who, by reason of their shared character and affiliation, will help if one needs help.2 Also, by virtue of its...