How to Look Good in a War: Justifying and Challenging State Violence - Hardcover

Rappert, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745331807 ISBN 13: 9780745331805

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2012

Synopsis

How to Look Good in A War examines the methods used to depict, defend and justify the use of state violence. Many books have shown how 'truth is the first casualty of war' but this is the first to analyse exactly how pro-war narratives are constructed and normalised.

Brian Rappert details the 'upside-down' world of war in which revelation conceals, knowledge fosters uncertainty, and transparency obscures. He looks at government spin during recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya where officials manoeuvre between circulating and withholding information.

Examining how organised violence is justified, How to Look Good in A War draws on experiences from recent controversy to consider how ignorance about the operation of war is produced and how concerned individuals and groups can intervene to make a difference.

About this title

Review:

Brian Rappert is one of our shrewdest commentators on the complicated ways in which we come to believe that wars are right and weapons are good. His brilliant case studies of official British enquiries into the Iraq War, of controversies over casualties in that war and of the international movement to ban cluster bombs turn settled wisdom on its head and show us new ways of looking at familiar issues. (Hugh Gusterson, Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at George Mason University)

In war, governments habitually lean towards closure rather than openness in matters of policy and practice. There then exists the issue of 'striking the right balance', with this seen as the core of any debate. Rappert challenges the very basis of such discussion, arguing with considerable insights that seeking balance or redressing imbalance may well be praiseworthy, yet structuring the argument in these terms can obscure the underlying issue of the legitimacy of force. This is an important book with much to offer to anyone concerned with the study of statecraft in time of war. (Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University)

How to Look Good in A War is a sophisticated exploration of how understandings of war and weapons are produced by the movements between disclosure and concealment in official discourse. An important and very readable addition to the literature on contemporary Western warmaking. (Martin Shaw, Research Professor, Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals and University of Sussex, and Professorial Fellow in International Relations and Human Rights, University of Roehampton, London. Author of The New Western Way of War.)

About the Author:

Brian Rappert is Professor of Science, Technology and Public Affairs in the Department of Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Exeter.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0745331807
• ISBN 13: 9780745331805
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 184