Description
War is a constitutive concept for IR yet - despite its centrality to both popular and elite conceptions of war - battle is not. We consider whether it should be, the conceptual frame that makes it useful as such and the strengths and limits of this approach. We begin by asking what battle is? Initially, battles appear as epistemic containers for fighting. By focusing on this fighting or the myths made out of it, scholarly inquiry produces valuable knowledge but disassembles battles as social and historical processes. In response, we situate the category of battle within a co-constitutive field of fighting and social relations. We develop the concept of a ‘battle imaginary’ to do the analytic work of braiding combat and society; interpretation and practice; and the place of battles in the distribution of power in polities during peace. Situating battle imaginaries amid the violent and contingent reciprocities of fighting shows how the evidence fighting produces - the audit of death, destruction and loss - only signifies as real when situated in a social imaginary field. At the same time, fighting and its interpretation drive the reproduction and transformation of battle imaginaries themselves.
