A Library of Social Science Publisher Promotion

Binaries in Battle: Representations of Division and Conflict

(Cambridge Scholars Publishing)

LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE is the leader in bringing important scholarly and professional books to a world-wide audience. Representing the world’s finest publishers, we reach our clients’ target markets by exhibiting their titles at cutting-edge scholarly and professional conferences throughout North America.

LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE selects significant, compelling titles—and markets them to our database of 30,000 scholars, professionals and students around the world. We publicize, promote and sell these books, draw attention to our most insightful authors—and bring powerful ideas into the public marketplace.

Cambridge Scholars Publishing titles on display
at a recent LSS book exhibit.

Binaries in Battle: Representations
of Division and Conflict

Editors: Marja Vuorinen, Noora Kotilainen and Aki-Mauri Huhtinen

•	To read the first chapter at no charge, please click here.
•	For information on ordering, please click here.
•	For information on obtaining an examination copy, please click here.

To read the introduction and first
chapter at no charge, please click here.

Book Description

Defining things through binary opposition – male/female, familiar/foreign, life/death – forms the base of human thinking. Adding moral assessment to logic, we often represent binaries even as divisions into good and evil. Exclusions based on the division of Us vs. Them make their presence felt during any conflict, and become crucial in times of war.

However, binary thinking is inherent also in peaceful, everyday conversation, when politics, social issues, ethnicities and religious identities are described and debated. Binaries in Battle: Representations of Division and Conflict is a wide-ranging multidisciplinary anthology that presents the fundamental rationale of binary thinking from many different angles.

The evidence is drawn from cases ranging from historical to contemporary and near future, covering both wartime and peacetime conflicts. The writers apply a wide variety of methods, including linguistics, visual semiotics, ethnography, and leadership and organizational analysis. Seemingly unconnected topics, such as humanitarianism and warfare, or death and tourism, appear strangely connected, and the relevance of speed to cyber warfare is revealed to contain a paradox.

Mass immigration is observed from several, mutually exclusive angles to provide a 360 degree view. Despite its multifaceted baselines, the book provides a solid understanding of the manifestations of binary thinking. By deconstructing ideological discourses it dispels black-and-white imageries, replacing them with softer shades of grey.

To read the introduction and first
chapter at no charge, please click here.

Binaries in Battle: Representations of Division and Conflict

Table of Contents

Introduction
Noora Kotilainen and Marja Vuorinen

Part I: War

Chapter One: The Thrill of Dark Tourism (Anu Valtonen)
Chapter Two “Us”, “Them” and the Fallen: The Burial of Fallen Soldiers
and the Image of the Enemy (Ilona Pajari)
Chapter Three: Gruesome Entertainment: The Representation of the Iraq War
in the Italian Press (Marja Härmänmaa)

Part II: Soldiership

Chapter Four: Drones, Missiles and Teddy Bears: The Crisis of 21st Century Soldiership (Saara Jantunen and Noora Kotilainen)
Chapter Five: The Kinaesthetic-Sensational Body of the Western Male Soldier:
Reflections from the Phenomenology of the Body (Virpi Lehtinen)

Part III: Mobility, Conflict and Terrorism

Chapter Six: Western Values Under Threat? Perceptions of “Us” and “Them”
in History Textbooks in Finnish Schools (Pia Mikander)
Chapter Seven: Irregularity as a Securitized Phenomenon in the Hubs of Transit Migration:
Practicing Security at the EU’s External and Internal Borders (Anitta Kynsilehto)
Chapter Eight: Case Breivik: A Solitary Madman’s Crusade or a Reality Check
for Western Democracies? (Marja Vuorinen)

Part IV: Strategy, Planning and Organisation

Chapter Nine: Strategists in Trouble? An Analysis of a Disagreement in a Strategy
Formulation Meeting (Virpi Sorsa)
Chapter Ten: The Linchpin and the Effectiveness of the Military Organisation (Juha Mälkki)
Chapter Eleven: A Parallax View of Violence and War in the Real and Virtual Worlds (Aki-Mauri Huhtinen)