Childing war: codex rescriptus

J. Marshall Beier

doi:10.1080/23337486.2026.2678618

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Childing war: codex rescriptus

2026-05-01

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J. Marshall Beier *

DOI：10.1080/23337486.2026.2678618

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Abstract

En 中文

What should we make of a warplane as a playground feature or war museums hosting children's birthday parties? Intuitively, we might expect that weapons of war would be difficult to reconcile with the dominant social imaginary of childhood as a time of innocence and with the usual view of children as cherished objects of protection. And yet, the repurposing of war materiel for play, the billing of military performances as child-friendly leisure activities, and other mundane encounters with militarized material and performative cultures are recurrent in the lives of children far from zones of conflict - instances of what a growing community of scholarship in International Relations and adjacent specialities investigates as the militarization of childhood. Building from this work, I reverse the analytical standpoint, inquiring into the 'childing' of militarism: a meaning-making process through which the encoded social meaning of childhood contributes to normalizing and naturalizing war and militarism. Beginning from the puzzle of an M113 armoured personnel carrier, seemingly out of place as an object of children's leisure, the article develops conceptual insights into childing as a key modality in the governance of social worlds in which martial practices and our present global political rendition more broadly are intelligible.

Keywords:

Childhood

childing

everyday life

governance

militarism

war