War implies the breakdown of social order.
As such, it is a rich topic for raising and answering the most fundamental, perennial questions of sociology. This course seeks to give students a new perspective on American society, as well as on an international system unable to maintain itself without collapse into violence. Many of the great social and political theorists have been concerned with the causes of war and violence as part of a more general approach to understanding society. We shall also be centrally concerned with the organization of the international social structure and economy, and the ways in which relations between advanced and developing countries can become locked into an institutionalized system of violence. In the first section of the course, we look at fundamental sociological concepts through the lens of social theories of war, relying on historical and institutional analyses by classical sociological thinkers as well as contemporary writers.