The Practice of War

"The fact is that war comes in many guises and its effects continue to be felt long after peace is proclaimed. This challenges the anthropologists who write of war as participant observers. Participant observation inevitably deals with the here and now, with the highly specific. It is only over the long view that one can begin to see the commonalities that emerge from the different forms of conflict and can begin to generalize." - from the Introduction by Elisabeth Colsen. This book offers an important contribution to a better understanding of the specific and the general in wartime. It examines how people cope and adjust to situations of war, depending upon whether these are low-intensity or high-intensity ones, on whether they are brief phases of conflict or long enduring periods of violence, with or without intermittent spells of peace. Of particular interest is the exploration of a largely new dimension of social interaction - that of the internet, thus providing a bridge between local concerns and global networks.