"War and violence is one of the most extraordinary blank spots in social theory." –Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, 1985

 Jabri’s Perspective: "Orthodox" conflict and peace studies are inadequate to fully understand war. They focus too much on how wars "break out" rather than the social conditions that promote war and that are always present between wars. Jabri implies that traditional conflict resolution approach to war will not yield success until it deals with these long-term social causes of war. She favors long-term conflict prevention in the form of a new "Peace Discourse".

Traditional conflict studies over-emphasize case studies of the decision-making process leading to war.  It has been too reactive.  There are problems with both the Individualist approach as well as the Structuralist approach.

Individualist (Rationalist, Neo-Realist Waltz) Critique:

• Decision-makers are not "unitary actors"—there is a myriad of actors with different reasons for wanting war and differing calculations of costs and benefits
• Decision-making is often irrational—in both intentions and actions
• Both Rationalist approaches—the "thin" theory (explicit reasons) and the "broad" theory (reasons in their interactive context)—have not been able to develop a generic theory of the absolute conditions necessary to predict war.
• Shortcoming: Tries to be too objective regarding human rationality. What is the origin of desires and beliefs? How do social structures condition actors to choose war?

Structuralist (i.e., Neo-Marxists/Galtung) Critique:

• Analyzing objective conditions and structures, you can only measure a society’s "proneness" to war;
• Too static; neglects individual consciousness and link between individual and groups—leaves out a theory of individual action;
• Patterns discovered in case studies seldom apply to new wars;
• Fails to explain how internal social "contradictions" are transformed into violence;
• The concept of institutional roles is not sufficient to fill the individual/structure gap. Individuals can always create new "rules" that redefine roles;
• Shortcoming: How do individuals’ (war) actions reproduce and transform social norms and institutions? How is Galtung’s Structural Violence converted to Direct Violence?

The "Third Way": War is not a breakdown of social processes, but a logical extension of them. Like Giddens, Jabri want to unite the Structuralist and Individualist approaches into a new concept of war as a social continuity that is always present. This "Third Way" of looking at war creates new opportunities to

Premise: War is a continuous social practice; it is always present in society. Jabri implies that we need to look for the causes of war before it breaks out, since its mechanisms are always present in society. She calls this, "war as a social continuity". We need to study how wars operate as a social continuity and, by implication, finding strategies to prevent them. We need to get at the root conditions deeply embedded in society that enable war to happen. Jabri uses Giddens to help identify those conditions and suggests ways to disable the conditions for war.

Goal: Define a Structurationist Theory of War. Use Giddens’ theory of Structuration to understand war as a continuous social practice that is always present in society. Suggest ways to counteract war’s social practices.

Method: Historical sociology--Looking at social practices across time and space.

Giddens’ key concepts: (1) interactive closed loop between agency and structure—mutually costitutive, (2) Theory of Action (recursiveness, reflexivity (self-monitoring), reutilization, stratification model and unintended consequences), (3) Theory of Structure: Signification, Domination, Legitimization. The concepts:

• War is a human social activity. It is recursive. It both repeats itself and reproduces itself;
• Bridging social structure and individual agency—each constitutes the other; each complements the other, and neither exists without the other; They are "mutually constitutive". Social continuities are the result of interaction between underlying structures and intentional conduct. In other words, while actors are constrained/enabled by the structure (political, social, economic, military) in which they operate, they also are a constitutive part of it, so that actor and structure are mutually constitutive;
• Social structure is both a medium and an outcome of human agency;
• Influence of Structure: (1) social rules convey meaning to and sanction behavior, (2) social resources enable and constrain actions [power]. (3) Agents draw upon structures’ rules and resources for their actions;
• Influence of Agency: (1) Action incorporates both agency and structure (2) Structures are produced and reproduced via agent interaction;
• The closed loop, interactive feedback cycle. Result is social practices across time and space.

Findings:

• War is a recursive human social activity. It both repeats itself and reproduces itself through human actions. War is "normal"; it is not an aberration. It is not a breakdown of social structures led by deviant leaders. It is the logical outcome of social structure and acceptable human behavior.
• To get at the sources of war, we must look "between wars." Examine the social forces at work (during peace) which will make war inevitable.
• What are the structures that ensure that war will eventually break out?
• There are: (1) Discursive Continuities & (2) Institutional Continuities (based on exclusion) which:

1. Legitimate/enable war;
2. Are drawn upon and reproduced by actors in social practice.

• Discourse of Legitimization— War is continually reproduced or reinforced through shared inter-subjective meanings and images as well as social institutions which serve a war-making machinery and its legitimization.
• The dominant discourse (reflecting social dominance) legitimizes the recourse to violence and sets the terms of the debate. Jabri regards as an integral part of the social structure of militarism the "militarist discourse", which may assume two forms: (1) either war is glorified, or it is depicted as a necessary evil (with a clear movement from the former to the latter).
• Rules for Discourse— do not merely render war tolerable, they enable war to take place through justification.
• explanation of violent nationalism in the "exclusionary discourse" of mutually constitutive Self and Other, and argues that "nations are constructed around ""narratives"" of war, the ""heroes"" of which acquire symbolic significance in the reproduction of a national identity based on war.

Conclusions:

• War is a social institution that is reproduced through discourses, which convey legitimacy to it.
• Since structure and actor are mutually constitutive, actors can act to change the war structure in which they operate.
• Actor(s) can emancipate themselves from structure and enable the possibility of the creation of new discourses on peace, which could serve to institutionalize an environment of peace as a social continuity.

Recommendations:

• Jabri advocates the development of "counter-discourses" (of Peace) which should reject the dichotomous and exclusionary perspective in favor of a tolerance of diversity, or even "recognize difference as a formative component of subjectivity
• Jabri’s goal is to prevent wars by giving decision-makers alternative world views to draw upon to legitimize decisions for peace. These alternative world views can be established in the public arena by a new "discourse of peace" that will define new terms for a public debate
• When enough people participate in the discourse of peace, it will become an alternative structure that can legitimize leaders’ decisions for peace.
• Jabri’s analysis stays at the very top level of Giddens’ concepts and fails to use concrete examples. Very abstract.