In Atrocity, Deviance, and Submarine Warfare, Nachman Ben-Yehuda recounts the evolution of submarine warfare, explains the nature of its deviance, documents its atrocities, and places these developments in the context of changing national identities and definitions of the ethical, at both social and individual levels. Introducing the concept of cultural cores, he traces the changes in cultural myths, collective memory, and the understanding of unconventionality and deviance prior to the outbreak of World War I. Significant changes in cultural cores, Ben-Yehuda concludes, permitted the rise of wartime atrocities at sea.
In Atrocity, Deviance, and Submarine Warfare, Nachman Ben-Yehuda recounts the evolution of submarine warfare, explains the nature of its deviance, documents its atrocities, and places these developments in the context of changing national identities and definitions of the ethical, at both social and individual levels. Introducing the concept of cultural cores, he traces the changes in cultural myths, collective memory, and the understanding of unconventionality and deviance prior to the outbreak of World War I. Significant changes in cultural cores, Ben-Yehuda concludes, permitted the rise of wartime atrocities at sea.
Atrocity, Deviance, and Submarine Warfare: Norms and Practices during the World Wars
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Atrocity, Deviance, and Submarine Warfare: Norms and Practices during the World Wars
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Overview
In Atrocity, Deviance, and Submarine Warfare, Nachman Ben-Yehuda recounts the evolution of submarine warfare, explains the nature of its deviance, documents its atrocities, and places these developments in the context of changing national identities and definitions of the ethical, at both social and individual levels. Introducing the concept of cultural cores, he traces the changes in cultural myths, collective memory, and the understanding of unconventionality and deviance prior to the outbreak of World War I. Significant changes in cultural cores, Ben-Yehuda concludes, permitted the rise of wartime atrocities at sea.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780472118892 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Michigan Press |
| Publication date: | 07/15/2013 |
| Series: | Configurations: Critical Studies Of World Politics |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d) |
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Atrocity, Deviance, and Submarine Warfare
Norms and Practices During the World Wars
By Nachman Ben-Yehuda
The University of Michigan Press
Copyright © 2013 University of MichiganAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-11889-2
CHAPTER 1
Challenging Cultural Cores and Symbolic-Moral Universes
THE GENERAL PUZZLE
Some of the oldest, most persistent issues in social science research focus on how and why cultures and societies come into being, how they endure, how they change, and how they disappear and become research topics for archaeologists, historians, and students of folklore. What exactly is it that changes or that remains stable? There are several theories that attempt to explain social change. Some focus on the functional deficits of institutions; others on shifts of power, on generational change, social construction, institutional isomorphism, or path dependency. Continuing and building on the tradition established by French sociologist Émile Durkheim, I propose that a key facet of cultural change and stability, at both the societal and individual levels, is to be found in the symbolic realm — the realm of ideas, language, values, norms, thoughts, moralities, perceptions, attitudes. This realm is where our conceptions of the social realities in which we live and function exist, and it is within this realm that we construct, mold, manipulate, and create new social realities. In this chapter, I will explore this realm and suggest that it is composed of cultural cores, that is, of symbolic structures that influence, in the most profound manner, the way we perceive, interpret, and act in the social environments in which we live.
Changes in these cultural cores can emanate from a variety of sources, such as new ideas, new technologies, and new discoveries. In this book, I will focus on technology, more specifically on the technological development of submarines. When this technology matured, it brought about a radical change in the way in which some influential and powerful military and political leaders thought about naval warfare. This change helped to bring about a new and brutal form of warfare: unrestricted submarine warfare. The adjective unrestricted is key here, because this brutal and merciless naval warfare consisted of sinking passenger, cargo, and hospital ships; killing survivors in lifeboats and in the water; and falsifying submarine patrol logs and weaving other deceptions to hide atrocities. These practices not only violated previous international agreements but explicitly targeted civilians. This new form of naval warfare meant that any vessel — whether a civilian, military, or even hospital ship — was fair prey for submarines. Indeed, Sturma points out that "the most significant aspect of unrestricted warfare is often assumed to be the attack on merchant shipping without warning, but arguably more significant was the abrogation of any responsibility for survivors." This unrestricted submarine warfare was practiced in the two 20th -century world wars and brought about the miserable deaths of thousands of sailors, passengers, and navy personnel. In the following chapters, I will analyze how technological advances and the symbolic changes that followed them converged to create this new form of naval warfare, which, in turn, helped to bring about spectacular acts of deviance from the norms, rules, and generally accepted morality of conducting naval combat that had existed before in the United States and Europe, such as proscriptions not to sink a civilian ship without warning, not to sink a hospital ship, and certainly not to kill survivors in lifeboats and rafts or in the water. This new naval warfare was practiced in almost all the seas and oceans of the planet.
SOURCES OF CULTURAL CHANGE
The sources of cultural change are varied and often external. Sing S. Chew (2006), for example, suggests that environmental changes affect human cultures and societies. Stephen Shennan examines a model of the relationships between demography and innovation within an evolutionary framework. However, these fascinating and intriguing ideas do not deal with critical symbolic changes that take place within cultures and affect human consciousness, social identities, behavior, and also the way cultures cope with ecological or demographic stresses. Technological innovations can cause profound social changes. Examples of new technologies that have had overwhelming effects on society include development of the car, air transportation, computers, the Internet, and the contraceptive pill. Today, developing nanotechnologies have the potential to create a social and cultural upheaval larger than that created by the Industrial Revolution. Sociologists have always tried to understand the nature of these processes. William F. Ogburn's theory of "cultural lag," for example, is an effort to account for the difference between rapid technological innovations and much slower corresponding social processes.
An interesting beam of light was shed on changes in global culture by Keck and Sikkink (1998). Examining three cases of advocacy networks — human rights, environment, and women's rights — they point out that advocacy networks have become significant players in bringing about social changes in transnational and domestic contexts. Keck and Sikkink explain that these advocacy networks are composed of nonstate actors that "interact with each other, with states, and with international organizations ... in terms of networks ... that are increasingly visible in international politics" (1) and that the explicit goal of these networks is to initiate and promote processes of significant social change in the behavior of states and international organizations, so that "what was once unthinkable becomes obvious, and from then on change starts to occur much more rapidly" (211). Part of this activity, clearly, is aimed at changing conduct norms so that corresponding practices will be altered as well. Thus, Keck and Sikkink examined the "early stages of norm emergence and adoption, characterized by intense domestic and international struggles over meaning and policy" (211). They are acutely aware that modern cultures are heterogeneous and experience unceasing processes of challenges and changes. Moreover, a 2004 study by Acharya, who based his work on a comparison of the impact of two transnational norms on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, suggests that local cultural agents reconstruct foreign norms in a process that makes these external norms fit the priorities and identities of these local agents, that is, that congruence building, rather than contestation, either wholesale or through rejection, is the key to understanding how most cases of norm diffusion are carried out.
Some scholars conceptualize that symbolic cultural essences and assets may be "out there," similar in existence to something "objective" and transcending specific human existence. To some extent, this perception is valid, because such essences as values and norms indeed transcend the existence of specific individuals. However, there is also something misleading about this perception, because symbolic assets do not exist without individuals who exhibit them in their identities, consciousness, and behavior. Individuals not only exhibit these assets but are involved continuously in processes that change them. Without individuals, these assets simply vanish into thin air. The cultural cores and symbolic-moral universes of such cultures as the Sumer, Maya, Aztec, Nabataean, and a large host of others have simply disappeared from everyday life and practices. Their existence depended completely on individuals who no longer exist. The relationship of individuals to the cultures within which they grow and that they create and change is interactive. Consequently, descriptions and understandings of symbolic cultural assets are valid only for specific times and places that set boundaries on the social construction of these assets.
Many scholars, intellectuals and journalists, point to technology as a major source of societal change, and indeed it is. It is also a relatively easy variable to describe and measure. Such technological innovations as electricity, the train, cars, aircraft, the contraceptive pill, computers, refrigerators, air conditioners, antibiotics, ballpoint pens, firearms, and methods of harnessing the power of fire and nuclear energy have all changed our lives and cultures in significant ways. Technology has certainly helped to change the face of warfare, a very major, albeit regrettable, human activity. But technology in itself is not a source of automatic changes. Technology can open the door to changes, but decisions about what to do with specific technologies or even what technologies to develop are a cultural issue. Technology in itself is worthless if it is not incorporated into human consciousness, if its utilization is not rationalized, and if its advances are not put to practical use. In fact, Thomas Hammes (2004) points out that warfare evolved from one generation to the next and that comprehending how and why this process took place requires us to understand the combination of political, social, and technological developments that was at the center of this process. Technology in and by itself is incapable of explaining the evolution of warfare.
Eagerness and willingness to develop new technologies and openness to incorporating them into daily cultural use require that societal values and ideologies allow them to happen. For example, no matter how many advanced technologies are developed to process pork meat, neither practicing Jews nor Muslims will ever eat it. As safe as nuclear energy may be in producing electricity (compared, say, to coal-burning power stations), if fear of nuclear energy remains strong, continued use of nonnuclear fuels will persist. A rejected technology, regardless of its beneficial potential, will have zero cultural impact, except the alternative price of not using it. Knowing about such technologies and deliberately rejecting them makes the alternative price a reality. In countries where theocrats enjoy significant political power, theocratic objections to some reproductive technologies not only will prevent their use but will also prevent the changes in values and daily life experienced by countries where the technologies are employed. Specific connections between technologies new and old, ideologies, and value systems are, I believe, most important elements to consider if we want to have a better grasp on and understanding of larger processes of social change and stability. With technological innovation, significant changes may take place in the spheres of cognitive ideas, consciousness, and values and emotions. The way we conceptualize and feel about the world that changes or remains unaltered in respect to technology is of prime importance.
One of the first questions we need to ask ourselves is what exactly is it that changes or remains unchanged? For example, I suspect that most people would probably agree that — in many cultural terms — the United States and the United Kingdom of the first decades of the 21st century are not the same countries that they were in the 1950s. Yet many things in these countries remain the same. So what exactly is it that makes us feel that these countries are not the same: clothes, cars, music, technology, different politicians, lingual jargon, landscapes, architecture, the economy, the telephone system? Indeed, many tangible and material items changed, some in most fundamental ways, but are these the major factors to examine when we want to discuss societal and cultural changes and stability? I think not.
There is an old and relevant joke that says that after Lenin's death, he met the last Russian czar, Nicolai II, in heaven. The czar was aware of Lenin's uneasiness at their meeting and put his mind quickly to rest, assuring him that he had forgiven Lenin and his comrades for murdering him and his family. "It was, after all," said the czar, "for the good of Mother Russia." "Still," asked the curious last czar, "what did you guys change? Is Tsaritsyn still there? Are you still using the ruble as currency? Does the vodka still have 75 percent alcohol in it? Do you still have the social mir?" Lenin found these questions easy to answer : "Well, we are still using the ruble; Tsaritsyn is called Stalingrad; we increased the alcohol content in the vodka to 90 percent, and the mir is now called the kolkhoz." The czar looked at Lenin in utter amazement and asked, "You mean to tell me that for the change of a couple of names and 15 percent more alcohol you launched your bloody revolution?" The question touched on by this joke focuses on a serious issue: what is it that really undergoes change?
CULTURAL CORES: TRADITIONAL CONCEPTS AND BEYOND
Issues of cultural change and stability have occupied the attention of social theorists since the very early days of social sciences. Such scholars as August Comte, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Herbert Spencer, among others, were haunted by these issues. However, it was the French intellectual Émile Durkheim who, in the waning years of the nineteenth century, put his finger on the symbolic locus of change and stability. His proposal was that every society has a "collective conscience," which is the core of the culture. Durkheim characterized this collective conscience in this way: "The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of the same society forms a determinate system which has its own life; one may call it the 'collective' or 'common conscience.' ... It is independent of the particular conditions in which individuals are placed." Clearly, Durkheim felt that there was something essential about this core. It is this collective conscience that defines and structures the moral boundaries and social identities of members of societies and cultures. It is the very soul of any social system, and it is therefore regarded by members of the social system as sacrosanct.
Decades later, Edward Shils used another term, referring to the "center," which he characterized as "the realm of values and beliefs." "This central value system," he explained, "is the central zone of society." Much like the collective conscience, the center is a somewhat mysterious, cryptic concept that is almost impossible to quantify. It is the area where the values, morality, and worldview of societies exist. While forming individuals' cognitive maps and identities, it transcends individuals. This locus is also the target for change and stability. Talcott Parsons (1966, 1971), one of sociology's past towering figures, coined the term societal community to refer to this entity. For Parsons, the societal community is "the salient foci of tension and conflict, and thus of creative innovation."
Cultural cores not only play a part at crucial symbolic points in the structure of culture. As both symbolic interaction approaches and Anthony Giddens's theory of structuration imply, cultural cores constitute a major component in the structuration of social identities. While these cores help to mold individual cultural identities, individuals can — and do — have decisive influences on the contents of these cores. The interaction between cultural cores and individuals' cultural identity has a dynamic quality to it: one influences the other. Hence, individuals' cultural and social behavior reflects specific cultural cores, and individuals' behavior and ideas also have the potential to alter these cores. This fascinating quality of the dynamic interactive exchange between cultural cores and individuals' social and cultural identities is one of the main reasons why cultural cores are such an interesting phenomenon.
To help make the classical contributions of Durkheim, Shils, and Parsons more conceptually accessible, it may be beneficial to envision them in terms of cultural cores that are surrounded by symbolic-moral universes and their boundaries. The core is the symbolic essence where values, value prioritizations, and deep -rooted beliefs are located. The enveloping symbolic-moral universes consist of actual behaviors that reflect the core: for example, words, images, ideas (i.e., symbolic representations). The boundaries of symbolic-moral universes are typically areas where conflicts between competing and conflicting universes are played out. Hence, a major characterization of societies and cultures is the existence of these universes, defined by boundaries; and attempts to change (or stifle cultural change) are directed at these cores, their surrounding universes, and their respective boundaries. Simple cultures have fewer such cores and universes, while more complex cultures are characterized by a larger number of these cores and universes. More disagreement about the nature of morality can and should be expected in complex societies, because they will have many cultural cores, wrapped by competing, clashing, or collaborating symbolic-moral universes. Indeed, one can expect more moral panics in such complex cultures. The core influences the symbolic-moral universe, but the behaviors of which this universe consists constantly engage other universes, and these negotiations can feed changes back to the core. Complex societies will always be entangled in ongoing moral negotiations in one or another form of dialogues, agreements, and conflicts about the nature of the society's moral fabrics. Issues of dominance, rights, representations, and the like are thus chronic sources of stress and tension in these societies.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue 1
Introduction 3
Chapter 1 Challenging Cultural Cores and Symbolic-Moral Universes 9
Chapter 2 Developing Submarines 44
Chapter 3 Wars, Culture, and Unrestricted Submarine Warfare 57
Chapter 4 Attempting to Curb Escalating Brutalities and Some Illustrations 69
Chapter 5 Development of Submarine Warfare in Two World Wars 96
Chapter 6 Pigboat Warfare: Acts of Extreme Deviance 164
Chapter 7 Concluding Discussion 210
Notes 255
Bibliography 297
Index 325