CRG Book Launches 21: Le plus grand des maux: Sociologie des guerres civiles by Gilles Dorronsoro.

CRG Book Launches  21:

with sandwiches and drinks

Language: English

Contrary to a widespread belief that confines them to the Global South, civil wars are a universal phenomenon that, by calling into question the self-evidence of routines, makes visible what underpins the reproduction of social order. Drawing on fieldwork, the author develops both a comparative and qualitative approach to contemporary civil wars as violent confrontations between social orders, based on three hypotheses.

First, far from being purely internal processes, civil wars are transnational phenomena whose dynamics depend on the constraints, resources, and norms of the international system. Second, the formation of an insurgent social order involves the establishment of new institutions that transform society in its most fundamental aspects: gender relations, property rights, and hierarchies between groups. Finally, civil wars create the conditions for a transformation in the relationship between habitus, strategy, and reflexivity. As a result, the possibilities for developing such strategies are limited due to a high degree of uncertainty, leading to a proliferation of short-term strategies aimed at avoidance, adaptation, or survival.

Gilles Dorronsoro is professor of political science. Among his latest publications : Une si prévisible défaite. Le gouvernement transnational de l’Afghanistan, Karthala 2021, Le gouvernement des Kurdes. Gouvernements partisans et ordres sociaux alternatifs, Karthala 2023.

“Gilles Dorronsoro is an expert on Afghanistan, Turkey, and South Asia. His research focuses on security and political development in Afghanistan, particularly the role of the International Security Assistance Force, the necessary steps for a viable government in Kabul, and the conditions necessary for withdrawal scenarios. Previously, Dorronsoro was a professor of political science at the Sorbonne in Paris and the Institute of Political Studies in Rennes. He also served as the scientific coordinator at the French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul, Turkey.

He is the co-founder and editor of the South Asian Multidisciplinary Academic Journal and the European Journal of Turkish Studies . He is the author of Revolution Unending: Afghanistan, 1979 to the Present (Columbia University Press, 2005), and The Afghan Revolution, from the Communists to the Taleban (Karthala Publishers 2000), and he is editor of La Turkey Conteste. Security regime and social mobilizations (Editions du CNRS, 2005):