We often think of war as creating two different kinds of people : soldiers and civilians. But hasn't history taught us that this distinction is painfully nebulous? The contributors to this volume, writing from different disciplinary vantages, address a number of important issues and divisions surrounding war - especially those that determine participation - play out across different historical and geographical settings. Contextualizing the dichotomy of civilian and combatant against these larger complexities, this book offers a new understanding of the problematic middle ground that civilians occupy during wartime.

War and social theory : a critique of the fusion theory in social theory /Lars Bo Kaspersen -- Genesis of the civilian in the western world, 1500-2000 / Gunner Lind -- Military and civilian in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Denmark / Jeppe Büchert Netterstrøm -- War observed at a distance : media coverage and attitudes to war in Denmark, 1939-1940 / Palle Roslyng-Jensen -- Wartime violence against civilians : philosophical reflections on war rape / RObin May Schott -- Demobilizing civilians / Steffen Jensen and Finn Stepputat -- Index.