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Militarizing the Body Politic: New Mediations as Weapons of Mass Instruction
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Militarizing the Body Politic: New Mediations as Weapons of Mass Instruction

Philip Graham and Allan Luke
Body and Society, Vol.9(4), pp.149-168
2003
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/135703403773684702
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Abstract

Sociology Cultural Studies bodies politic collective habitus militarization political formations propaganda public pedagogy
As militarization of bodies politic continues apace the world over, as military organizations again reveal themselves as primary political, economic and cultural forces in many societies, we argue that the emergent and potentially dominant form of political economic organization is a species of neo-feudal corporatism. Drawing upon Bourdieu, we theorize bodies politic as living habitus. Bodies politic are prepared for war and peace through new mediations, powerful means of public pedagogy. The process of militarization requires the generation of new, antagonistic evaluations of other bodies politic. Such evaluations are inculcated via these mediations, the movement of meanings across time and space, between formerly disparate histories, places, and cultures. New mediations touch new and different aspects of the body politic: its eyes, its ears, its organs, but they are consistently targeted at the formation of dispositions, the prime movers of action.

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