Reconceptualizing War

Abstract The field of Strategic Studies has seen the repeated rise and fall of concepts that temporarily dominated discourses and research agendas. Why does this keep happening? What are the consequences for the study and our understanding of war? This book considers such temporary but intense embraces of concepts as fashions—they come and go but are neither arbitrary nor inconsequential. Since fashionable concepts are used widely, they become ever broader and vaguer to the point that they are essentially stripped of any meaning. At the same time, they are bestowed with authority and power that allows them to withstand criticism and marginalizes alternative perspectives. These characteristics severely affect the quality, depth, and diversity of research. By tracing three (previously) fashionable concepts through their fashion lifecycle, this book offers the first detailed inquiry into the effects of fashionability on the concepts themselves, and its effects on research as well as the field more generally. Embedded within a discussion of the history and dynamics of the field of Strategic Studies, it calls for more reflexivity in the study of war and strategy.