01 – Is there a place for fun and pleasure in war research? A conversation with Catherine Lutz

In this episode, Eva Johais and Catherine Lutz discuss whether we can and should study fun in the context of war. This means dealing with moral and conceptual questions of conducting research on war. Why does Catherine Lutz call for “decentering the battlefield”? How can our own moralities inhibit our understanding of war as a central phenomenon in the contemporary world? And what forms of pleasure do people feel when they go to war? During this conversation, the concept of war is also linked to the idea of spectacle, which reveals how war resembles other forms of human experience like sports and how we all participate in war. Catherine Lutz is Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Currently, she co-directs the “Costs of War” project at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Eva Johais is a Post Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.