Citation

Mundy J. Secur. Dialogue 2011; 42(3): 279-295.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0967010611405378

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The identification of intra-national armed conflict as a leading problem for the international community in the 1990s produced a wave of novel research into civil wars. Though these new civil war studies soon began to claim a degree of consensus on several key questions, the very concept and ontology of civil war has been implicitly and explicitly contested. An examination of the politics of naming civil wars likewise reveals the extent to which varying and sometimes conflicting definitions of civil war are still in circulation among various observer types. Instead of adjudicating these disputed definitions of civil war, this article details the way in which particular conceptions of civil war produce their object of analysis. The recent Algerian conflict stands as an excellent case study in the politics of naming civil wars and the ways in which the conceptual frameworks of the new civil war studies make Algeria into a civil war. To go beyond the contested definition of civil war, the new civil war studies should not judge the viability of concepts of mass armed violence - whether civil war or so-called new wars - on their alleged coherence with particular representations of history. Concepts of mass violence should instead be judged in relation to the political goals from which they obtain their warrant in the first place.