Synopses & Reviews
How have long-standing and unconscious secular assumptions about religion shaped the post-9/11 climate and its wars? Stacey Gutkowski explores this little-examined, yet crucial, element of British perceptions of and policy towards Jihadism over the last decade, to draw critical conclusions about the relationship between war and the secular. She points to a surprisingly coherent body of secular beliefs that have fuelled policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and counter-terrorism, and that have had mixed results - responsible for both positive strategies and tragic errors.
The theory Gutkowski develops on the impact of this secular approach to warfare holds a broader global significance, and cannot be viewed as just a British phenomenon. This book addresses ongoing and critical debates, such as the 'overreach' of Western liberal interventionism in the Middle East, and speaks to policy-makers, security analysts and students of IR, Foreign Policy and Security Studies.
Review
To come
About the Author
Stacey Gutkowski is Lecturer in Conflict/Post-Conflict Studies in the Middle East and Mediterranean Studies Programme at King's College London, UK. She holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from Cambridge University.
Table of Contents
1. Acknowledgements
2. List of Abbreivations
3. Introduction
4. A Shared Cultural Palette: European Origins of British Secular Ways of War
5. Developing Secular Habits in War: The Northern Irish Troubles
6. The British Secular Habitus up to and Including the 9/11 Wars
7. War in Afghanistan: From Secular Hysteresis to a Culturalist Approach, 2001-2010
8. Muqtada al-Sadr and the Question of Secular Democracy in Iraq, 2003-4
9. Pastoral Power and Secular Regimes of Security in Britain, 2005-2010
10. The 9/11 Wars and the Restructuring of the Liberal Secular Habitus
11. Notes
12. Bibliography
13. Index