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War is undoubtedly a dirty business, usually entailing massive destruction and loss of life on both sides. In an attempt to limit this inevitable death and destruction, philosophers have argued that belligerents must following certain principles in the conduct of warfare; namely, the principles of discrimination (that only legitimate military targets may be attacked) and of proportionality (that the damage done in attacking such targets must not be out of proportion to the military value of the target). These principles have come to be enshrined in International Law through a range of treaties, which are collectively known in military circles as the International Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC).

The essential idea at the heart of Michael Walzer’s supreme emergency argument, or as Brian Orend calls it, the supreme emergency exemption, is that desperate times call for desperate measures. If the situation is dire enough, and the consequences faced are serious enough, then it will be justifiable to act in ways which would normally be prohibited. In concrete terms, what this means is that during a time of war, a state can in some circumstances ignore the usual rules of warfare (i.e. the principles of discrimination and proportionality). Walzer claims this is justified if and only if the following conditions are met: the state is the victim of aggression, the state is about to be militarily defeated, and that the consequences of defeat will be catastrophic (i.e. would include extreme and widespread violations of fundamental human rights). In other words, when faced with a supreme emergency one is justified in engaging in widespread violations of the rights of some people (people to whom one only has a general duty) in order to prevent widespread violations of the rights of others (people to whom one has a specific duty).

In this paper I argue that the ‘rules’ which must be applied in order for widespread rights-violations to be considered justified are actually well understood, and that supreme emergency is not an unusual situation for which new rules must be considered, but simply an important specific example of such a situation. Essentially I argue that one must dirty one’s hands in war, but that there is no need for one’s hands to get any dirtier in a situation of supreme emergency.

This paper provides a novel framework for considering a much-debated question within military ethical fields, using insights from two of the major proponents of contemporary military ethics.

This chapter explores a common, but typically overlooked urban practice: smoking outside the workplace. This activity is analysed as an attempt to create marginal spaces of brief retreat from the acceleration and agitation of the workplace. By talking to smokers about what drives them into the street, and capturing smokers photographically, we discover that these people are seeking moments of breakaway from the dominating involvement of the commercial city. The practices we observe in this chapter are typical of what Erving Goffman refers to as ‘away’ activities: strategies for briefly escaping from the absorption of all-consuming social situations. We conclude by asking whether these urban pauses could be stretched to a point where they challenge the compulsion of the overwrought rhythmic order of the capitalist city.

This introductory chapter starts off by discussing the differences and interconnections of visual sociology and urban sociology in their quest to understand human settlements. It then moves to argue for expanding the focus to other disciplines that are equally geared toward researching aspects of the city in visual and multimodal ways, since the urban context cannot be studied comprehensively without engaging a multitude of disciplines and trying to make productive connections between them. The chapter continues with a concise overview and discussion of each of the contributions in this first of two volumes of “Visual and Multimodal Urban Sociology” in the “Research in Urban Sociology” series. These twin volumes explore multiple ways in which the city and city life may be approached, studied, and expressed through visual and multimodal means and methods, thereby as much as possible including sensory experiences other than those related to seeing and hearing. It concludes with drawing some contours and challenges of visual and multimodal urban studies and the critical role of technology in advancing this cross-disciplinary field of inquiry.