Weapons in science fiction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Fictional rayguns are often depicted in science fiction.

 

Strange and exotic weapons are a recurring feature in science fiction. In some cases, weapons first introduced in science fiction have been made a reality; other science fiction weapons remain purely fictional, and are often beyond the realms of known physical possibility.

At its most prosaic, science fiction features an endless variety of sidearms—mostly variations on real weapons such as guns and swords. Among the best-known of these are the phaser—used in the Star Trek television series, films and novels—and the lightsaber and blaster—featured in Star Wars movies, comics, novels and TV shows. 

Besides adding action and entertainment value, weaponry in science fiction sometimes touch on deeper concerns and become a theme, often motivated by contemporary issues. One example is science fiction that deals with weapons of mass destruction.

Weapons in early science fiction

Weapons of early science fiction novels were usually bigger and better versions of conventional weapons, effectively more advanced methods of delivering explosives to a target. Examples of such weapons include Jules Verne's fulgurator and the "glass arrow" of the Comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.

A classic science fiction weapon particularly in British and American science fiction novels and films is the ray gun. A very early example of a ray gun is the Heat-Ray featured in H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898). The discovery of x-rays and radioactivity in the last years of the 19th century led to an increase in the popularity of this family of weapons, with numerous examples in the early twentieth century, such as the disintegrator rays of George Griffith's future war novel The Lord of Labour (1911). Early science fiction film often showed raygun beams making bright light and loud noise like lightning or large electric arcs. 

Wells also prefigured modern armored warfare with his description of tanks in his 1903 short story "The Land Ironclads", and aerial warfare in his 1907 novel The War in the Air.

Lasers and particle beams

Arthur C. Clarke envisaged particle beam weapons in his 1955 novel Earthlight, in which energy would be delivered by high-velocity beams of matter.

After the invention of the laser in 1960, it briefly became the death ray of choice for science fiction writers. For instance, characters in the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage (1964) and in the Lost in Space TV series (1965–1968) carried handheld laser weapons.

By the late 1960s and 1970s, as the laser's limits as a weapon became evident, the ray gun began to be replaced by similar weapons with names that better reflected the destructive capabilities of the device. These names ranged from the generic "pulse rifle" to series-specific weapons, such as the phasers from Star Trek. 

In the Warhammer 40,000 franchise, a faction known as the Imperial Guard has a "lasgun" as their main weapon, and larger cannon versions being mounted onto tanks and being carried around by Space Marines. The Eldar has a special unit called the Swooping Hawks equipped with a "lasblaster".

Plasma weaponry

Weapons using plasma (high-energy ionized gas) have been featured in a number of fictional universes, such as Transformers, the Halo franchise, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Warframe, and the miniature game Warhammer 40,000.

Weapons of mass destruction

Nuclear weapons are a staple element in science fiction novels. The phrase "atomic bomb" predates their existence, and dates back to H. G. Wells' The World Set Free (1914) when scientists had discovered that radioactive decay implied potentially limitless energy locked inside of atomic particles (Wells' atomic bombs were only as powerful as conventional explosives, but would continue exploding for days on end). Cleve Cartmill predicted a chain-reaction-type nuclear bomb in his 1944 science-fiction story "Deadline", which led to the FBI investigating him, due to concern over a potential breach of security on the Manhattan Project.

The use of radiological, biological and chemical weapons is another common theme in science fiction. In the aftermath of World War I, the use of chemical weapons, particularly poison gas, was a major worry, and was often employed in the science fiction of this period, for example Neil Bell's The Gas War of 1940 (1931). Robert A. Heinlein's 1940 story "Solution Unsatisfactory" posits radioactive dust as a weapon that the US develops in a crash program to end World War II; the dust's existence forces drastic changes in the postwar world. In The Dalek Invasion of Earth, set in the 22nd Century, it is claimed the Daleks invaded Earth after it was bombarded with meteorites and a plague wiped out entire continents. 

A subgenre of science fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, uses the aftermath of nuclear or biological warfare as its setting.

Powered armor and fighting suits

Glove-scientist-weapons-concept

 

The idea of powered armor has appeared in a wide variety of fiction, beginning with E. E. Smith's Lensman series in 1937. One of the most famous early versions was Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel Starship Troopers, which can be seen as spawning the entire subgenre concept of military "powered armor", which would be further developed in Joe Haldeman's The Forever War. The Marvel character Iron Man is another noteworthy example. Other examples include the power armor used by the Space Marines and other characters from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40k franchise, and the power armor used by the Brotherhood of Steel in the Fallout franchise, and the MJOLNIR Armor worn by protagonist Master Chief in the Halo series of video games. The anime series Gundam Wing centers around nuclear powered piloted suits of armor called mobile suits, The Mobile suits referred to as Gundams (Being made from the highly durable material, Gundanium) are virtually indestructible, highly maneuverable and boasting formidable firepower. 

Powered armor suits appear numerous times in the later Command and Conquer games.

Some science fiction stories contain accounts of hand-to-hand combat in zero gravity, and the idea that old-fashioned edged weapons—daggers, saws, mechanical cutters—may still have the advantage in close-up situations where projectile weapons are impractical.

Cyberwarfare and cyberweapons

The idea of cyberwarfare, in which wars are fought within the structures of communication systems and computers using software and information as weapons, was first explored by science fiction. 

John Brunner's 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider is notable for coining the word "worm" to describe a computer program that propagates itself through a computer network, used as a weapon in the novel. William Gibson's Neuromancer coined the phrase cyberspace, a virtual battleground in which battles are fought using software weapons and counterweapons. The Star Trek episode A Taste of Armageddon is another notable example.

Certain Dale Brown novels place cyberweapons in different roles. The first is the "netrusion" technology used by the U.S. Air Force. It sends corrupt data to oncoming missiles to shut them down, as well as hostile aircraft by giving them a "shutdown" order in which the systems turn off one by one. It is also used to send false messages to hostiles, in order to place the tide of battle in the favor of America. The technology is later reverse-engineered by the Russian Federation to shut down American anti-ballistic missile satellites from a tracking station at Socotra Island, Yemen. 

Cyberwarfare has moved from a theoretical idea to something that is now seriously considered as a threat by modern states.

In a similar but unrelated series of incidents involved various groups of hackers from India and Pakistan that hacked and defaced several websites of companies and government organizations based in each other's country. The actions were committed by various groups based in both countries, but not known to be affiliated with the governments of India or Pakistan. The cyber wars are believed to have begun in 2008 following the Mumbai attacks believed to be by a group of Indian cyber groups hacking into Pakistani websites. Hours after the cyber attacks, a number of Indian websites (both government and private) were attacked by groups of Pakistani hackers, claiming to be retaliation for Indian attacks on Pakistani websites. The back and forth attacks have persisted on occasions since then.

Doomsday machines

A Doomsday machine is a hypothetical construction which could destroy all life, either on Earth or beyond, generally as part of a policy of mutual assured destruction. 

In Fred Saberhagen's 1967 Berserker stories, the Berserkers of the title are giant computerized self-replicating spacecraft, once used as a doomsday device in an interstellar war aeons ago, and, having destroyed both their enemies and their makers, still attempting to fulfil their mission of destroying all life in the universe. The 1967 Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine" written by Norman Spinrad, explores a similar theme. 

Alien doomsday machines are common in science fiction as "Big Dumb Objects", McGuffins around which the plot can be constructed. An example is the Halo megastructures in the video game franchise Halo, which are world-sized doomsday machines.

The sentient weapon

The science fiction themes of autonomous weapons systems and the use of computers in warfare date back to the 1960s, often in a Frankensteinian context, notably in Harlan Ellison's 1967 short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and films such as The Forbin Project, originally released in 1970 (based on a novel by Dennis Feltham Jones). In Keith Laumer's Bolo novels, the eponymous protagonists are huge main battle tanks with self-aware artificial intelligence. 

Another common theme is that of dehumanised, cyborg or android soldiers: human, or quasi-human beings who are themselves weapons. Philip K. Dick's 1953 short story "Second Variety" features self-replicating robot weapons, this time with the added theme of weapons imitating humans. In his short story "Impostor", Dick goes one step further, making its protagonist a manlike robot bomb that actually believes itself to be a human being. 

The idea of robot killing machines disguised as humans is central to James Cameron's film The Terminator, and its subsequent media franchise. They also appear as the central problem of the 1995 cult film Screamers (based on "Second Variety") and its sequel. The Battlestar Galactica's cylons are sentient weapons too, even in the original series and in its reboot in the 2000s. However, human-looking cylons are the central characters of the remake series (in the original series, only one prototype was human-looking). 

In Harlan Ellison's 1957 short story "Soldier From Tomorrow" the protagonist is a soldier who has been conditioned from birth by the State solely to fight and kill the enemy. Samuel R. Delany's 1966 novella Babel-17 features TW-55, a purpose-grown cloned assassin. Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner, like Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, on which it is loosely based, uses the story of a hunt for escaped military androids to explore the idea what it means to be human. 

In John Carpenter's 1974 film Dark Star, a notable portion of the plot involves the characters trying to convince a large intelligent bomb not to detonate inside the ship. 

The idea of animate weapons is now so much a science fiction trope that it has spawned a whole genre of science fiction films such as Hardware, Death Machine and Universal Soldier.

War on the mind

Themes of brainwashing, conditioning, memory-erasing, and other mind control methods as weapons of war feature in much science fiction of the late 1950s and 1960s, parallelling the contemporary panic about communist brainwashing, existence of sleeper agents, and the real-world attempts of governments in programs such as MK-ULTRA to make such things real. 

David Langford's short story BLIT (1988) posits the existence of images (called basilisks) that are destructive to the human brain, which are used as weapons of terror by posting copies of them in areas where they are likely to be seen by the intended victims. Langford revisited the idea in a fictional FAQ on the images, published by the science journal Nature in 1999. The neuralyzer from the Men in Black films are compact objects which can erase and modify the short-term memories of witnesses by the means of a brief flash of light, ensuring that no one remembers encountering either aliens or the agents themselves. 

The TV series Dollhouse (2009) features technology that can "mindwipe" people (transforming them into "actives", or "dolls") and replace their inherent personalities with another one, either "real" (from another actual person's mind), fabricated (for example, a soldier trained in many styles of combat and weaponry, or unable to feel pain), or a mixture of both. In a future timeline of the series, the technology has been devised into a mass weapon, able to "remote wipe" anyone and replace them with any personality. A war erupts between those controlling actives, and "actuals" (a term to describe those still retaining their original personas). An offshoot technology allows actual people to upload upgrades to their personas (such as fighting or language skills), similar to the process seen in The Matrix, albeit for only one skill at a time.

The resizeability of weapons in science fiction

Kylo Ren's three bladed lightsaber.

 

Some weapons in science fiction can be folded and put away for easy storage. For instance the sword carried by Hikaru Sulu in the Star Trek movie of 2009 had its blade unfold from its own form into the fully extended position from the state of a simple handle. Another example of this are the weapons of the Mass Effect universe. The weaponry in the games would fold up into smaller and more compact shapes when holstered or deactivated. Lightsabers from Star Wars are no larger than a flashlight until they are turned on.

Parallels between science fiction and real-world weapons

Some new forms of real world weaponry resemble weapons previously envisaged in science fiction. The early 1980s-era Strategic Defense Initiative, a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (Intercontinental ballistic missiles and Submarine-launched ballistic missiles), gained the popular name "Star Wars" after the popular franchise created by George Lucas.

In some cases, the influence of science fiction on weapons programs has been specifically acknowledged. In 2007, the science fiction author Thomas Easton was invited to address engineers working on a DARPA program to create weaponized cyborg insects, as envisaged in his novel Sparrowhawk. 

Active research on powered exoskeletons for military use has a long history, beginning with the abortive 1960s Hardiman powered exoskeleton project at General Electric, and continuing into the 21st century. The borrowing between fiction and reality has worked both ways, with the power loader from the film Aliens resembling the prototypes of the Hardiman system.

American military research on high power laser weapons started in the 1960s, and has continued to the present day, with the U.S. Army planning, as of 2008, the deployment of practical battlefield laser weapons. Lower-powered lasers are currently used for military purposes as laser target designators and for military rangefinding. Laser weapons intended to blind combatants have also been developed, but are currently banned by the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, although low-power versions designed to dazzle rather than blind have been developed experimentally. Gun-mounted lasers have also been used as psychological weapons, to let opponents know that they have been targeted in order encourage them to hide or flee without having to actually open fire on them.

Weapon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

A weapon, arm or armament is any implement or device that can be used with intent to inflict damage or harm. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy and efficiency of activities such as hunting, crime, law enforcement, self-defense, and warfare. In broader context, weapons may be construed to include anything used to gain a tactical, strategic, material or mental advantage over an adversary or enemy target. 

 

While ordinary objects – sticks, rocks, bottles, chairs, vehicles – can be used as weapons, many are expressly designed for the purpose; these range from simple implements such as clubs, axes and swords, to complicated modern firearms, tanks, intercontinental ballistic missiles, biological weapons, and cyberweapons. Something that has been re-purposed, converted, or enhanced to become a weapon of war is termed weaponized, such as a weaponized virus or weaponized laser.

History

Prehistoric

An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, axe heads, chisels, and polishing tools.

 

The use of objects as weapons has been observed among chimpanzees, leading to speculation that early hominids used weapons as early as five million years ago. However, this can not be confirmed using physical evidence because wooden clubs, spears, and unshaped stones would have left an ambiguous record. The earliest unambiguous weapons to be found are the Schöningen spears, eight wooden throwing spears dating back more than 300,000 years. At the site of Nataruk in Turkana, Kenya, numerous human skeletons dating to 10,000 years ago may present evidence of traumatic injuries to the head, neck, ribs, knees and hands, including obsidian projectiles embedded in the bones that might have been caused from arrows and clubs during conflict between two hunter-gatherer groups. But the evidence interpretation of warfare at Nataruk has been challenged.

Ancient history

A four-wheeled ballista drawn by armored cataphract horses, c. 400.

 

The earliest ancient weapons were evolutionary improvements of late neolithic implements, but significant improvements in materials and crafting techniques led to a series of revolutions in military technology. 

The development of metal tools began with copper during the Copper Age (about 3,300 BC) and was followed by the Bronze Age, leading to the creation of the Bronze Age sword and similar weapons. 

During the Bronze Age, the first defensive structures and fortifications appeared as well, indicating an increased need for security. Weapons designed to breach fortifications followed soon after, such as the battering ram, which was in use by 2500 BC.

The development of iron-working around 1300 BC in Greece had an important impact on the development of ancient weapons. It was not the introduction of early Iron Age swords, however, as they were not superior to their bronze predecessors, but rather the domestication of the horse and widespread use of spoked wheels by c. 2000 BC. This led to the creation of the light, horse-drawn chariot, whose improved mobility proved important during this era. Spoke-wheeled chariot usage peaked around 1300 BC and then declined, ceasing to be militarily relevant by the 4th century BC.

Cavalry developed once horses were bred to support the weight of a human. The horse extended the range and increased the speed of attacks. 

In addition to land based weaponry, warships, such as the trireme, were in use by the 7th century BC.

Post-classical history

Medieval Indian weapons

 

Ancient Chinese cannon displayed in the Tower of London.

 

European warfare during the Post-classical history was dominated by elite groups of knights supported by massed infantry (both in combat and ranged roles). They were involved in mobile combat and sieges which involved various siege weapons and tactics. Knights on horseback developed tactics for charging with lances providing an impact on the enemy formations and then drawing more practical weapons (such as swords) once they entered into the melee. By contrast, infantry, in the age before structured formations, relied on cheap, sturdy weapons such as spears and billhooks in close combat and bows from a distance. As armies became more professional, their equipment was standardized and infantry transitioned to pikes. Pikes are normally seven to eight feet in length, and used in conjunction with smaller side-arms (short sword).

In Eastern and Middle Eastern warfare, similar tactics were developed independent of European influences. 

The introduction of gunpowder from the Asia at the end of this period revolutionized warfare. Formations of musketeers, protected by pikemen came to dominate open battles, and the cannon replaced the trebuchet as the dominant siege weapon.

Modern history

Early modern

The European Renaissance marked the beginning of the implementation of firearms in western warfare. Guns and rockets were introduced to the battlefield. 

Firearms are qualitatively different from earlier weapons because they release energy from combustible propellants such as gunpowder, rather than from a counter-weight or spring. This energy is released very rapidly and can be replicated without much effort by the user. Therefore even early firearms such as the arquebus were much more powerful than human-powered weapons. Firearms became increasingly important and effective during the 16th century to 19th century, with progressive improvements in ignition mechanisms followed by revolutionary changes in ammunition handling and propellant. During the U.S. Civil War new applications of firearms including the machine gun and ironclad warship emerged that would still be recognizable and useful military weapons today, particularly in limited conflicts. In the 19th century warship propulsion changed from sail power to fossil fuel-powered steam engines. 

The bayonet is used as both knife and, when attached to a rifle, a polearm.

 

Since the mid-18th century North American French-Indian war through the beginning of the 20th century, human-powered weapons were reduced from the primary weaponry of the battlefield yielding to gunpowder-based weaponry. Sometimes referred to as the "Age of Rifles", this period was characterized by the development of firearms for infantry and cannons for support, as well as the beginnings of mechanized weapons such as the machine gun. Of particular note, Howitzers were able to destroy masonry fortresses and other fortifications, and this single invention caused a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), establishing tactics and doctrine that are still in use today.

Industrial age

The Vickers was the successor to the Maxim gun and remained in British military service for 79 consecutive years.

 

Assault rifle CZ-805 BREN (produced in Czech Republic).

 

An important feature of industrial age warfare was technological escalation – innovations were rapidly matched through replication or countered by another innovation. The technological escalation during World War I (WW I) was profound, including the wide introduction of aircraft into warfare, and naval warfare with the introduction of aircraft carriers.

World War I

World War I marked the entry of fully industrialized warfare as well as weapons of mass destruction (e.g., chemical and biological weapons), and new weapons were developed quickly to meet wartime needs. Above all, it promised to the military commanders the independence from the horse and the resurgence in maneuver warfare through extensive use of motor vehicles. The changes that these military technologies underwent before and during the Second World War were evolutionary, but defined the development for the rest of the century.

Interwar

This period of innovation in weapon design continued in the inter-war period (between WW I and WW II) with continuous evolution of weapon systems by all major industrial powers. The major armament firms were the Schneider-Creusot (based in France), the Škoda Works (Czechoslovakia), and Vickers (Great Britain). The 1920s were committed to disarmament and outlawing of war and poison gas, but rearmament picked up rapidly in the 1930s. The munitions makers responded nimbly to the rapidly shifting strategic and economic landscape. The main purchasers of munitions from the big three companies were Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey-- and, to a lesser extent, in Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, and the Soviet Union,

Criminalizing poison gas

Realistic critics understood that war could not really be outlawed, but its worst excesses might be banned. Poison gas became the focus of a worldwide crusade in the 1920s. Poison gas did not win battles, and the generals did not want it. The soldiers hated it far more intensely than bullets or explosive shells. By 1918, chemical shells made up 35 per cent of French ammunition supplies, 25 per cent of British, and 20 per cent of the American stock. The “Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous, or Other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare” ["Geneva Protocol"] was issued in 1925, and was accepted as policy by all major countries. In 1937 poison gas was manufactured in large quantities, but not used except against nations that lacked modern weapons or gas masks.

World War II

Many modern military weapons, particularly ground-based ones, are relatively minor improvements of weapon systems developed during World War II. World War II however, perhaps marked the most frantic period of weapons development in the history of humanity. Massive numbers of new designs and concepts were fielded, and all existing technologies were improved between 1939 and 1945. The most powerful weapon invented during this period was the atomic bomb, however many other weapons influenced the world, such as jet planes and radar, but were overshadowed by the visibility of nuclear weapons And long-range rockets.

Nuclear weapons

Since the realization of mutually assured destruction (MAD), the nuclear option of all-out war is no longer considered a survivable scenario. During the Cold War in the years following World War II, both the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a nuclear arms race. Each country and their allies continually attempted to out-develop each other in the field of nuclear armaments. Once the joint technological capabilities reached the point of being able to ensure the destruction of the Earth x100 fold, then a new tactic had to be developed. With this realization, armaments development funding shifted back to primarily sponsoring the development of conventional arms technologies for support of limited wars rather than total war.

Post Cold War

During the late 2010s, tensions between the West and the East escalate as nuclear-based issues arise. Such event has been since dubbed as Cold War II.

Types

By user

• Personal weapons (or small arms) – designed to be used by a single person.
• Light weapons – 'man-portable' weapons that may require a small team to operate.
• Heavy weapons – artillery and similar weapons larger than light weapons.
• Hunting weapon – used by hunters for sport or getting food.
• Crew served weapons – larger than personal weapons, requiring two or more people to operate correctly.
• Fortification weapons – mounted in a permanent installation, or used primarily within a fortification.
• Mountain weapons – for use by mountain forces or those operating in difficult terrain.
• Vehicle weapons – to be mounted on any type of combat vehicle.
• Railway weapons – designed to be mounted on railway cars, including armored trains.
• Aircraft weapons – carried on and used by some type of aircraft, helicopter, or other aerial vehicle.
• Naval weapons – mounted on ships and submarines.
• Space weapons – are designed to be used in or launched from space.
• Autonomous weapons – are capable of accomplishing a mission with limited or no human intervention.

By function

• Antimatter weapons (theoretical) would combine matter and antimatter to cause a powerful explosion.
• Archery weapons operate by using a tensioned string and bent solid to launch a projectile.
• Artillery are firearms capable of launching heavy projectiles over long distances.
• Biological weapons spread biological agents, causing disease or infection.
• Chemical weapons, poisoning and causing reactions.
• Energy weapons rely on concentrating forms of energy to attack, such as lasers or sonic attack.
• Explosive weapons use a physical explosion to create blast concussion or spread shrapnel.
• Firearms use a chemical charge to launch projectiles.
• Improvised weapons are common objects, reused as weapons, such as crowbars and kitchen knives.
• Incendiary weapons cause damage by fire.
• Non-lethal weapons are designed to subdue without killing.
• Magnetic weapons use magnetic fields to propel projectiles, or to focus particle beams.
• Melee weapons operate as physical extensions of the user's body and directly impact a close target.
  • Blade weapons, designed to pierce through flesh and cause bleeding.
  • Blunt instruments, designed to break bones, concuss or produce crush injuries.
• Missiles are rockets which are guided to their target after launch. (Also a general term for projectile weapons).
• Loitering munitions, designed to loiter over a battlefield, striking once a target is located.
• Nuclear weapons use radioactive materials to create nuclear fission and/or nuclear fusion detonations.
• Primitive weapons make little or no use of technological or industrial elements.
• Ranged weapons (unlike mêlée weapons), target a distant object or person.
• Rockets use chemical propellant to accelerate a projectile
• Suicide weapons exploit the willingness of their operator not surviving the attack.
• Refugees as weapons a mass exodus of refugees from a state to a hostile state as a "weapon" against an enemy.

By target

• Anti-aircraft weapons target missiles and aerial vehicles in flight.
• Anti-fortification weapons are designed to target enemy installations.
• Anti-personnel weapons are designed to attack people, either individually or in numbers.
• Anti-radiation weapons target sources of electronic radiation, particularly radar emitters.
• Anti-satellite weapons target orbiting satellites.
• Anti-ship weapons target ships and vessels on water.
• Anti-submarine weapons target submarines and other underwater targets.
• Anti-tank weapons are designed to defeat armored targets.
• Area denial weapons target territory, making it unsafe or unsuitable for enemy use or travel.
• Hunting weapons are weapons used to hunt game animals.
• Infantry support weapons are designed to attack various threats to infantry units.

Manufacture of weapons

The arms industry is a global industry that involves the sales and manufacture of weaponry. It consists of a commercial industry involved in the research and development, engineering, production, and servicing of military material, equipment, and facilities. Many industrialized countries have a domestic arms-industry to supply their own military forces - and some also have a substantial trade in weapons for use by its citizens, for self-defence, hunting or sporting purposes. 

Contracts to supply a given country's military are awarded by governments, making arms contracts of substantial political importance. The link between politics and the arms trade can result in the development a "military-industrial complex", where the armed forces, commerce, and politics become closely linked.

Legislation

The production, possession, trade and use of many weapons are controlled. This may be at a local or central government level, or international treaty. Examples of such controls include:

• The right of self-defense
• Knife legislation
• Air gun laws
• Gun law
• Arms trafficking laws
• Arms control treaties
• Space Preservation Treaty

Gun laws

All countries have laws and policies regulating aspects such as the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification and use of small arms by civilians. 

Countries which regulate access to firearms will typically restrict access to certain categories of firearms and then restrict the categories of persons who may be granted a license for access to such firearms. There may be separate licenses for hunting, sport shooting (a.k.a. target shooting), self-defense, collecting, and concealed carry, with different sets of requirements, permissions, and responsibilities.

Arms control laws

International treaties and agreements place restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation and usage of weapons from small arms and heavy weapons to weapons of mass destruction. Arms control is typically exercised through the use of diplomacy which seeks to impose such limitations upon consenting participants, although it may also comprise efforts by a nation or group of nations to enforce limitations upon a non-consenting country.

Arms trafficking laws

Arms trafficking is the trafficking of contraband weapons and ammunition. What constitutes legal trade in firearms varies widely, depending on local and national laws.

Lifecycle problems

There are a number of issue around the potential ongoing risks from deployed weapons, the safe storage of weapons, and their eventual disposal when no longer effective or safe.

• Ocean dumping of unused weapons and bombs, including ordinary bombs, UXO, landmines and chemical weapons has been common practice by many nations, and often caused hazards.
• Unexploded ordnance (UXO) are bombs, land mines and naval mines and similar that did not explode when they were employed and still pose a risk for many years or decades.
• Demining or mine clearance from areas of past conflict is a difficult process, but every year, landmines kill 15,000 to 20,000 people and severely maim countless more.
• Nuclear terrorism was a serious concern after the fall of the Soviet Union, with the prospect of "loose nukes" being available. While this risk may have receded, similar situation may arise in the future.

In science fiction

Strange and exotic weapons are a recurring feature or theme in science fiction. In some cases, weapons first introduced in science fiction have now been made a reality. Other science fiction weapons remain purely fictional, and are often beyond the realms of known physical possibility. 

At its most prosaic, science fiction features an endless variety of sidearms, mostly variations on real weapons such as guns and swords. Among the best-known of these are the phaser used in the Star Trek television series, films and novels and the lightsaber and blaster featured in the Star Wars movies, comics, novels and TV series.

In addition to adding action and entertainment value, weaponry in science fiction sometimes become themes when they touch on deeper concerns, often motivated by contemporary issues. One example is science fiction that deals with weapons of mass destruction.

Sociology of race and ethnic relations

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The sociology of race and ethnic relations is the study of social, political, and economic relations between races and ethnicities at all levels of society. This area encompasses the study of systemic racism, like residential segregation and other complex social processes between different racial and ethnic groups.

The sociological analysis of race and ethnicity frequently interacts with postcolonial theory and other areas of sociology such as stratification and social psychology. At the level of political policy, ethnic relations is discussed in terms of either assimilationism or multiculturalism. Anti-racism forms another style of policy, particularly popular in the 1960s and 1970s. At the level of academic inquiry, ethnic relations is discussed either by the experiences of individual racial-ethnic groups or else by overarching theoretical issues.

Classical Theorists

W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois is well known as one of the most influential black scholars and activists of the 20th century. Du Bois educated himself on his people, and sought academia as a way to enlighten others on the social injustices against his people. Du Bois research "revealed the Negro group as a symptom, not a cause; as a striving, palpitating group, and not an inert, sick body of crime; as a long historic development and not a transient occurrence". Du Bois believed that Black Americans should embrace higher education and use their new access to schooling to achieve a higher position within society. He referred to this idea as the Talented Tenth. With gaining popularity, he also preached the belief that for blacks to be free in some places, they must be free everywhere. After traveling to Africa and Russia, he recanted his original philosophy of integration and acknowledged it as a long term vision.

Marx

Marx described society as having nine "great" classes, the capitalist class and the working class, with the middle classes falling in behind one or the other as they see fit. He hoped for the working class to rise up against the capitalist class in an attempt to stop the exploitation of the working class. He blamed part of their failure to organize on the capitalist class, as they separated black and white laborers. This separation, specifically between Blacks and Whites in America, contributed to racism. Marx attributes capitalism's contribution to racism through segmented labor markets and a racial inequality of earnings.

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington was considered one of the most influential black educators of the 19th and 20th centuries. Born in 1856 as a slave in Virginia, Washington came of age as slavery was coming to an end. Just as slavery ended, however, it was replaced by a system of sharecropping in the South that resulted in black indebtedness. With growing discrimination in the South following the end of the Reconstruction era, Washington felt that the key to advancing in America rested with getting an education and improving one's economic well-being, not with political advancement. Consequently, in 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, in order to provide individuals with an education that would help them to find employment in the growing industrial sector. By focusing on education for blacks, rather than political advancement, he gained financial support from whites for his cause. Secretly, however, he pursued legal challenges against segregation and disfranchisement of blacks.

Weber

Weber laid the foundations for a micro-sociology of ethnic relations beginning in 1906. Weber argued that biological traits could not be the basis for group foundation unless they were conceived as shared characteristics. It was this shared perception and common customs that create and distinguish one ethnicity from another. This differs from the views of many of his contemporaries who believed that an ethnic group was formed from biological similarities alone apart from social perception of membership in a group.

Modern Theorists

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva is currently a professor of sociology at Duke University and is the 2018 president of the American Sociological Association. He received his PhD in 1993 from University of Wisconsin–Madison, which is where he met his mentor, Professor Charles Camic, of which he said "Camic believed in me and told me, just before graduation, that I should stay in the states as I would contribute greatly to American sociology." Bonilla-Silva did not start off his work as a "race scholar," but originally was trained in class analysis, political sociology, and sociology of development (globalization). It was not until the late 1980s when he joined a student movement calling for racial justice at the University of Wisconsin that he began his work in race. In his book, Racism without Racists, Bonilla-Silva discusses less overt racism, which he refers to as "new racism," which disguises itself "under the cloak of legality" in order to accomplish the same things. He also discusses "color-blind racism," which is essentially when people go off the basis that we have achieved equality and deny past and present discriminations.

Patricia Hill Collins

Patricia Hill Collins is currently a Distinguished University Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her PhD in sociology in 1984 from Brandeis University. Collins was the president-elect for the American Sociological Association, where she was the 100th president and the first African-American woman to be president of the organization. Collins is a social theorist whose work and research primarily focuses on race, social class, sexuality, and gender. She has written a number of books and articles on said topics. Collins work focuses on Intersectionality, by looking at issues through the lens of women of color. In her work, she writes "First, we need new visions of what oppression is, new categories of analysis that are inclusive of race, class, and gender as distinctive yet interlocking structures of oppression".

Denise Ferreira da Silva

Denise Ferreira da Silva is a trained sociologist and critical philosopher of race. She is a Professor and Director of The Social Justice Institute (the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice) at the University of British Columbia. Before joining UBC, she was an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, at the University of California, San Diego. Da Silva’s major monograph, Toward a Global Idea of Race, traces the history of modern philosophical thought from Descartes to Herder in order to reconstruct the emergence of the racial as an historical and scientific concept. This sociology of race relations for Da Silva locates the mind as  the principle site of the development of the racial and cultural which emerge as the global (exterior-spatial) in the contemporary context.

Discipline development by country

United States

In the United States, the study of racial and ethnic relations has been widely influenced by the factors associated with each major wave of immigration as the incoming group struggles with keeping its own cultural and ethnic identity while also assimilating into the broader mainstream American culture and economy. One of the first and most prevalent topics within American study is that of the relations between white Americans and African Americans due to the heavy collective memory and culture borne out of and lingering from centuries of forced slavery in plantations. Throughout the rest of American history, each new wave of immigration to the United States has brought another set of issues as the tension between maintaining diversity and assimilating takes on new shapes. Racism and conflict often rears up during these times. However, some key currents can be gleaned from this body of knowledge: in the context of the United States, there is a tendency for minorities to be punished in times of economic, political and/or geopolitical crises. Times of social and systemic stability, however, tend to mute whatever underlying tensions exist between different groups. In times of societal crisis—whether perceived or real—patterns or retractability of American identities have erupted to the fore of America's political landscape. Examples can be seen in Executive Order 9066 that placed Japanese Americans in incarceration centers as well as the 19th century Chinese Exclusion Act that banned Chinese laborers from emigrating to the United States (local workers viewed Chinese laborers as a threat). Current examples include post-9/11 backlash against Muslim Americans, although these have taken place in civil society, not through public policy.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, foreign nationals were actively encouraged and sponsored to migrate in the 1950s after the dissolution of the Empire and the social devastation of the Second World War. The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act changed the law so that only certain British Commonwealth members were able to migrate. This law was tightened again with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 and Immigration Act 1971. The Race Relations Act 1968 extended certain anti-discrimination policies with respect to employment, housing, commercial and other services. This was extended again with the Race Relations Act 1976. 

As with the UK establishments of media and cultural studies, 'ethnic relations' is often taught as a loosely distinct discipline either within sociology departments or other schools of humanities.

Major British theorists include Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, Richard Jenkins, John Rex, Michael Banton and Tariq Modood.

Racism and psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis has much to offer the study of racism. Its central proposition is that rationality is not the natural state of the individual, and that individuals develop defence mechanisms to cope with anxiety. Humans resist change because change threatens established ways of dealing with anxiety. Individual defence mechanisms contribute to social defence mechanisms. The most regressive defence mechanism (the 'paranoid-schizoid' position) results in a complete dehumanising of the 'all-bad' group. The 'all-bad' group is admired as well as feared (often evident in the conspiracy theory). Paradoxically, the arbitrariness of the category 'race' enables the psychotic subject to invest more meaning in it.

Modernity's attempt at rationalisation papers over a polycentric psyche (i.e. all of us still have anxieties and desires, despite our apparent rationality). Racism is a response to the abstracting logic of modernity. The rationality of western, 'white' society is defined in opposition to the 'animality' of black, 'primitive' society.

Some psychoanalytic theorists also argue that passionate anti-racism can produce psychological states analogous to racism.

Social psychology

A racist political campaign poster from the 1866 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election

 

One of the most important social psychological findings concerning race relations is that members of stereotyped groups internalize those stereotypes and thus suffer a wide range of harmful consequences. For example, in a phenomenon called stereotype threat, members of racial and ethnic groups that are stereotyped as scoring poorly on tests will perform poorer on those tests if they are reminded of this stereotype. The effect is so strong that even simply asking the test-taker to state her or his race before taking the test (such is by bubbling in "African American" on a multiple choice question) will significantly alter test performance. A specifically sociological contribution to this line of research has found that such negative stereotypes can be created on the spot: an experiment by Michael Lovaglia et al.(1998) demonstrated that left-handed people can be made to suffer stereotype threat if they are led to believe that they are a disadvantaged group for a particular kind of test.

Audit studies

Another important line of research on race takes the form of audit studies. The audit study approach creates an artificial pool of people among whom there are no average differences by race. For instance, groups of white and black auditors are matched on every category other than their race, and thoroughly trained to act in identical ways. Given nearly identical resumes, they are sent to interview for the same jobs. Simple comparisons of means can yield strong evidence regarding discrimination. The best known audit study in sociology is The Mark of a Criminal Record by Harvard University sociologist Devah Pager. This study compares job prospects of black and white men who were recently released from jail. Its key finding is that blacks are significantly discriminated against when applying for service jobs. Moreover, whites with a criminal record have about the same prospect of getting an interview as blacks without one. Another recent audit by UCLA sociologist S. Michael Gaddis examines the job prospects of black and white college graduates from elite private and high quality state higher education institutions. This research finds that blacks who graduate from an elite school such as Harvard have about the same prospect of getting an interview as whites who graduate from a state school such as UMass Amherst.