Gaston Bouthoul. In commemoration of a pioneer of polemology

Abstract

In 1945, Gaston Bouthoul (1896-1970), who is known for his studies on war as a phenomenon that cannot be placed in time, became the founder of a special sociology of war conflict: polemology or the sociology of war. Not only does his approach differ from sociologies of peace (Friedensforschungen), but also from the general sociology of conflict of Julien Freund, which is also called polemology. Bouthoul developed the central thesis of his sociology of war using the evidence obtained from his important demographic studies of the 1930?s. His conception of a "functional pacifism", which was cultivated enthusiastically for several decades in countries such as Italy, Holland and Spain, was very often misunderstood. His kind of pacifism was not declamatory and moralist, but profoundly realist. According to Bouthoul, rather than dreaming about eliminating the war phenomenon, it was essential to "deconsecrate it" through scientific sociology channels.