Everyday modalities of militarization: beyond unidirectional, state-centric, and simplistic accounts of state violence

Critiques of militarization have deftly highlighted its limitations as a concept, not least because it too easily implies something done to otherwise benign and peaceful societies by militaries. The guest editors of this special issue however are inviting scholars to rethink militarization through the notion of everyday modalities. This more sociological approach, I argue, enables us to consider how militarization simultaneously produces and is produced through society. This, I argue, enables us to more fully examine the extent and character of the social and daily labour that makes state violence possible, to decentre the notion that state violence is almost always legitimate and that it is the only form of legitimate violence, and explore the multiple ways that communities contest the reproduction of militarized violence in their lives. Treating militarization in terms of everyday modalities therefore can facilitate more nuanced thinking about the social reproduction of violence