2017 年 18 巻 1 号 p. 115-127
This study utilizes the case of rifles used by soldiers to examine the links between (lethal) material things, embodied actions and emotions and the social processes within which they are embedded. I argue that weapons (things) do not exist “out there” apart from society but that their “thingness” is created through use— weapons are transformed by being integrated into soldier-weapon-drill complexes involving corporeal processes: they become more than mere objects by being linked to individuals and practices. Three clusters of issues are dealt with. First, the relation between lethal things and body practices, that is, the ways in which violent objects are incorporated into soldiers’ body practices; second, the integration between lethal objects and emotions focusing on the way weapons mediate between internal emotional states and threatening environments; and third, control of bodies and emotions centered on weapons as lethal things, namely how organizational discipline masters the lethal potential of rifles.
