U.S. sociology and the Iraq War

Abstract

The 2003 U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq had profound consequences for the people living in that nation. In this essay, I provide a brief overview of the dramatic changes that transpired in Iraq due to the war. I then move on to highlight the contributions U.S. sociologists have made in studies regarding the conflict, based on a review of articles published from 2003-2016 in ten generalist U.S.-based journals. My review shows that while U.S. sociology has made significant contributions to further collective knowledge about American aspects of the Iraq War, U.S.sociologists have paid very little attention to the actual impacts of the invasion and occupation on Iraqi social organizations, Iraqi culture, and on the lives of individual Iraqis. I make the case that these historically significant events deserve more scholarly attention than they have been given so far. I further argue that U.S. sociologists have a special responsibility to document, study, and explain the consequences of their government's behavior when it causes extensive harm to people living in another land.

Theoretical Sociology of War and Structural Causes of the 2003 US Invasion of Iraq

“…And while sociologists have recently written much about matters related to American wars, such as media coverage, public opinion and attitudes, and the antiwar movement, they have largely neglected studies about why the wars happen at all. This is also true of recent literature on the causes of the 2003 Iraq War (Bonds 2017), the war that has garnered the most attention from American sociologists in recent decades.…”

“…It remains a stubborn fact that sociologists have paid relatively little attention to war and related concepts such as militarism and imperialism (Hooks and Rice 2005; Bonds 2017). In the existing sociology of war literature, even less attention has been dedicated to American war making and imperialism; rather, sociologists have tended to conduct studies about the causes of war that are cross-national and transhistorical in scope (e.g., Joas 2003; Malešević 2010; Mann 2013b; Wimmer and Min 2006).…”