Sweden and Our Military Profession: Building a Common Identity or Creating Friction?

Berndtsson, Joakim

doi:10.31374/book2-b

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Reacting strongly to this view, many military officers expressed concern over the equalization of soldiers and/or civilian personnel in the armed forces with military officers (Informant 20). The expressed lack of differentiation between military officers and/or civilian personnel was also recognized by Berndtsson (2021), who treated it as a case of identity formation. Beyond identify formation, I suggest that there is also a struggle for demonstrating competence.…”

Section: Contradictory Views On the Profession Emergementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The implications of this publication have been recognized in research. As Berndtsson (2021) notes, the publication takes a broad and allencompassing view of the military profession. Reacting strongly to this view, many military officers expressed concern over the equalization of soldiers and/or civilian personnel in the armed forces with military officers (Informant 20).…”

Section: Contradictory Views On the Profession Emergementioning

confidence: 99%

“…During my fieldwork, the struggles between scientific competence and military professional competence were manifest most evidently in a recent matter reported to the UKÄ, in which the holders of senior positions at SEDU became an issue of major discussion. As Berndtsson (2021) notes, the issue of academization, or academic competencies among military officers has, according to some officers, resulted in too much focus on theoretical knowledge in officer education at the expense of practical, warfighting skills. My analysis suggests that the military competence in terms of "profession" or "craft" gained through, for example, exercises has been used to strengthen the position of military officers at SEDU.…”

Section: "The Pen and The Sword"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is also a literature on the issue of the academicization of the military (e.g Berndtsson 2021;Danielsson & Weibull 2008Van de Ven & Johnson 2006).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rethinking Civil-Military Collaboration: A Relational Practice Approach to Total Defense in Sweden

Deiaco

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This thesis stems from the research problem that, despite extolling the validity of relational dependencies for understanding civil-military collaboration, the interdisciplinary scholarship is notably lacking in empirical depth regarding the underlying relational dynamics in actual activities. The aim of the monograph is therefore to explore the underlying relational dynamics of civil-military collaboration. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s relational approach to practice – and more specifically his thinking tools of field, capital and habitus – the thesis provides an empirically rich analysis of how Sweden’s total defense is practiced. By interviewing and observing various practitioners, I analyze how the development and organization of total defense as a field and various sub-fields, the distribution of symbolic, cultural and economic capital, and officials’ (un)shared dispositions, or habitus, reveal various seldom studied underlying relational dynamics of civil-military collaboration. The results indicate that struggles between military and civil crisis management officials organized around the stake of how total defense should be practiced are grounded in two competing logics of practice: one military and one civil crisis management. The study concludes that these logics of practice constitute particular relational dynamics at play, and struggles that shape civil-military collaboration beyond previous research that lists certain established well-known prerequisites for civil-military collaboration. This conclusion can help researchers and practitioners avoid treating the prerequisites for collaboration as merely instrumentalist, while they inherently embody underlying relational dynamics.

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Section: Contradictory Views On the Profession Emergementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Contradictory Views On the Profession Emergementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: "The Pen and The Sword"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is also a literature on the issue of the academicization of the military (e.g Berndtsson 2021;Danielsson & Weibull 2008Van de Ven & Johnson 2006).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rethinking Civil-Military Collaboration: A Relational Practice Approach to Total Defense in Sweden

Deiaco

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The Military Academy as a Civilizing Institution: A Historical Sociology of the Academization of Officer Education in Sweden

Larsson

2024

Armed Forces & Society

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Throughout history, military officers’ standing in society has been maintained through the establishment and reforming of military academies. Gradually infusing officer education with academic standards and scholarly ideals has helped secure the corps’ status as a legitimate profession. Drawing on Norbert Elias and Pierre Bourdieu, this article explores the “academization” of officer education in Sweden over 200 years. It finds that academization processes have been prominent in the military officer field, first, during 19th-century struggles to establish a state-organized educational system and war science discipline for the emerging profession, and second, during post-Cold War struggles to reinstate the military’s legitimacy and status by integrating officer education in the university sector. It argues that academic capital has been drawn on instrumentally in the officer field, as a means to endow the corps with a wider credibility and, more broadly, justify the existence of violent professions in peaceful societies.

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Sweden and Our Military Profession: Building a Common Identity or Creating Friction?

Cited by 2 publications

References 17 publications

Rethinking Civil-Military Collaboration: A Relational Practice Approach to Total Defense in Sweden

Rethinking Civil-Military Collaboration: A Relational Practice Approach to Total Defense in Sweden

The Military Academy as a Civilizing Institution: A Historical Sociology of the Academization of Officer Education in Sweden

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