Soldier Identity, Military Culture, and Complex Emergencies by Josefine Kühnel Larsen

Semesterangivelse: Forårs kursus

 
Udgave: Forår 2013 Samf
ECTS points: 10 ECTS
Punkter: 10 ECTS

Semester:

 Spring 2013
Uddannelsesdel: Kandidat niveau
Kontaktpersoner: Josefine Kühnel Larsen
(Coordinator for courses in English: Anders Berg-Sørensen)
Skema- oplysninger:  Vis skema for kurset
Samlet oversigt over tid og sted for alle kurser inden for Lektionsplan for Det Samfundsvidenskabelige Fakultet Forår 2013 Samf
Undervisnings- form: The course will consist of 14 lectures. The format will be a combination of teacher presentations, supervised student discussions of the readings, and possibly student presentations. The course will draw in practitioners and experts in order to apply the theories to experiences in the field. This course encourages high levels of student participation.

Formative coursework/Assessment:

Exams can be written in English. Exams will take forms of a written assignment (Fri Opgave) (10 ECTS).

Students are required to write one essay of:
5.250 words (if written independently)
8.650 words (two students)
12.250 words (three students)

Formål: At the end of the course the student will be able to:
  • Describe what enables people to conduct and carry out violence (both legitimate and illegitimate).


  • Illustrate understandings of identity theory.


  • Illustrate understandings of the resolicatisation processes in the military institution.


  • Describe and analyse theories of soldiers and warriors.


  • Illustrate understandings of the roles undertaken by soldiers in peacekeeping operations and how this correlate with their military training and soldier identity.


In the essay the student will be expected to utilise and apply the theoretical and empirical knowledge attained during the course rather than merely reproducing the theories.
Indhold: Rambo versus Mother Theresa - who is the best soldier of today?

The course examines the role of soldiers in contemporary conflicts. Understanding these roles requires knowledge about military culture, and soldier identity. We will investigate military culture, which plays a prominent role in forming the identity of soldiers. It does so through the military institution. Throughout, there will be a particular (though by no means exclusive) focus on African armed forces and militaries in post-conflict societies. Guest speakers with field experience will be drawn in where appropriate.

The content below may be adapted to fit with guest speakers and current events:

1. Introduction to the course

2. The professional soldier and the state (state categories of the soldier)
This lecture will be a discussion of the military as a professional institution, its level of civilian control and bond to the state, as well as how changes in international politics and the social environment impacted upon the soldier and the kind of forces that were required. The classical debate between Janowitz and Huntington will set the scene for this discussion.

3. Military professionalism and the changing security agenda
Is the traditional soldier identity applicable in the changed security environment?

4. Military culture and ethos
Ability to repress civilian habits, and to carry out violence as well as the extrinsic motivations for combat are enabled through military “resocialisation” processes, including training and other forms for conditioning. These will be discussed and examined.

5. The warrior hero
Who is the warrior, and the hero? Cultural depictions of war and the idealised soldier linked to heroism will be examined in relation to how these are expressed in the military and in the western imagination of soldiers and in soldiers’ identification of themselves.
6. Talking about the assignments

7. Soldier as peacekeeper
Solders are tasked with roles that goes beyond traditional and conventional military ‘criteria’, such as self-defence, to include several facets of the peacebuilding, peacekeeping and peacemaking processes, in addition to combat requirements.

8. Combat and peace
Are peacekeeping tasks conflicting with the traditional soldier roles and identity?

9. The non-state warrior
Who is the non-state warrior and how do they differ from the state warrior?

10. Combat motivation sacrifice
War is only possible in the moment, when someone is ready to kill. What motivates, and enables, the soldier to carry out violence and to sacrifice his/her life?

11. Understanding Atrocities and Rational Violence
Why is civil war so violent? Understanding ability to carry out violence.

12. Ethnic Violence?
Is ethnicity a useful – or a dangerous – way of understanding conflicts?

13. From warrior to soldier
How do non-state warriors transform into soldiers?

14. Wrap up

Kompetence- beskrivelse: This course is useful for students who wish to further their understandings of humanitarian emergencies and the roles and identity of soldiers. This knowledge is highly useful to careers in international development, international relations, diplomacy and military organisations.

Lærebøger: Avant, D., 2000. “From Mercenaries to Citizen Armies: Explaining Change in the Practice of War”, International Organization, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 41–72.

Avant. D. and Lebovic. J., 2000. “U.S. Military Attitudes Toward Post-Cold War Missions”, Armed Forces & Society vol. 27, no. 1 p. 37-56.

Banton, M., 2000. “Ethnic Conflict” Sociology vol. 34 no. 3 pp. 481-498.

Branch, A., 2010. “Exploring the roots of LRA violence: Political Crisis and Ethnic politica in Acholiland” in The lords Resistance Army: Myth and Reality, Allen, T. and Vlassenroot, K, eds., Zed Books, pp. 25-44.

Browning, C., 1992. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, Harper Perennial, New York: (chapter 18). pp. 159-189.

Callaghan, J.M. and Kernic, F., 2003. “Social Psychology of the individual soldier”, in Armed Forces and International Security: global trends and Issues, LIT Verlag, Münster, pp. 19-26.

Celestino, P., 2012. “The Soldier as Lethal Warrior and Cooperative Political Agent: On Soldier’s Ethical and Political Obligations toward the Indigenous Other”, Armed Forces and Society, vol. 38, no. 2, pp.177-204.

Chandra, K., 2006. “What is Ethnic Identity and Does it Matter?” Annual Review of Political Science vol. 9, pp. 397-424.

Coker, C., 2002. “The Warrior Dishonor” in Waging War without Warriors, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Colorado, pp. 1-15.

Coker, C., 2002. “The warrior Tradition and the Non-Western Way of Warfare” in Waging War without Warriors, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Colorado, pp. 111-159.

Coker, C., 2007. “Achilles and the Warrior Soul” in The Warrior Ethos, Military Culture and The War on Terror, Routledge, New York, pp. 16-45.

Coker, C., 2007. “The Unhappy Warrior” in The Warrior Ethos, Military Culture and The War on Terror, Routledge, New York, pp. 1-15.

Coker, C., 2007. “Warrior Ethos” in The Warrior Ethos: Military Culture and The War on Terror, Routledge, New York, pp. 132-147.

Dandeker, C., 2003. “Building Flexible Forces for the 21st Century” in Handbook of the Sociology of the Military, Caforio, G. ed., Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York pp. 405-416.

Dawson, G., 1994. “Playing at Soldiers: Boyhood Phantasies and The Pleasure-Culture of War” in Soldier Heroes, British Adventure, Empire and the imagining of Masculinities, Routledge, London.

Dawson, G., 1994. “Self-imagining: Boyhood Masculinity, Social Recognition and the Adventure Hero” in Soldier Heroes, British Adventure, Empire and the imagining of Masculinities, Routledge, London.

Fearon, J. and d Laitin, D., 2000. “Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity” International Organization (Autumn), pp. 845-877.

Fearon, J., 2006. ‘‘Ethnic Mobilization and Ethnic Violence” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, Barry Weingast and Donald Wittman (eds.), Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Fields, F. E. and Jensen J., 1998. “Military Professionalism in Post-Communist Hungary and Poland”, European Security, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 117–155.

Goffman, E., 1961. “On the characteristics of the total institution” in Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, Penguin Books, pp. 1-124.

Hale, H., 2004. “Explaining Ethnicity”, Comparative Political Studies vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 458-485.

Henriksen. R., 2007. “Warriors in combat – what makes people actively fight in combat?” Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 187-223.

Hoffman. D., 2003. “Like Beasts in the Bush: Synonyms of Childhood and Youth in Sierra Leone”, Postcolonial Studies vol. 6, no. 3, pp.295-308.

Hoffman. D., 2011. “Violence, Just in Time: War and Work in Contemporary West Africa”, Cultural Anthropology, vol. 26 no. 1 pp. 34-57.

Huntington, S., 1957. The Soldier and The State, Belknap Press of Havard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

ICG Central Africa Report, 2000. “Uganda and Rwanda: Friends or Enemies?”

Janowitz, M. 1971. The Professional Soldier.

Kalyvas, S., 2004. “The Paradox of Terrorism in Civil War”, Journal of Ethics vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 97-138.

Keen, D., 2008. “Combatants and their Grievances” in Complex Emergencies, Polity Press, Cambridge, pp. 50-71.

Kümmel, G., 2003. “A Soldier Is a Soldier Is a Soldier” in Handbook of the Sociology of the Military, Caforio, G. ed., Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York, pp. 417-433.

Langholtz, H., 1998. The Psychology of Peacekeeping, Praeger Publishers.

Lt Col Baucom, D. R., 1985. The professional soldier and the warrior spirit.

Lt. Col. Grossman, D. and Christensen, L., 2004. On Combat, The Psyhology and Phsiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace, PPTC Research Publications.

Martin, M., 2003. “Soldiers and governments in Postpraetorian Africa: Cases in the Francophone Area” in Handbook of the Sociology of the Military, Caforio, G. ed., Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York, pp. 187-200.

Mazower, M. 2002. “Violence and the State in the Twentieth Century” American Historical Review vol. 107 no. 4 pp. 1158-1178.

Miller, L., 1997. “Do soldiers hate peacekeeping? The case of Preventive Diplomacy Operations in Macedonia”, Armed forces and Society vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 415-450.

Moskos, C. C. 1976. Peace Soldiers, The Sociology of a United Nations Military Force, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.

Newsome, B., 2003. “The Myth of Intrinsic Combat Motivation”, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 24-46.

Peters, R. 1994. “The New Warrior Class, Parameters”, US Army War College Quarterly. Vol 24 pp. 16-26.

Posen, B., 1993. “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict” In Ethnic Conflict and International Security, Michael Brown (ed.), Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ.

Reed, W.C., 1996. “Exile, Reform, and the Rise of the Rwandan Patriotic Front”, The Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 34, no. 3 pp. 479-501.

Sarkesian S. C., Williams J. A. and Bryant F. B., 1995. “Professional Perceptions and Self-images” in Soldiers, Society and National Security, Sarkesian S. C., Williams J. A. and Bryant F. B., eds., Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp. 89-111.

Sarkesian S. C., Williams J. A. and Bryant F. B., 1995. “US Military Professionalism and the Changing Security Agenda” in Soldiers, Society and National Security, Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp. 1-29.

Soeters, J.L. Winslow, D.J. and Weibull, A., 2003. “Military Culture” in Handbook of the Sociology of the Military, Caforio, G. ed., Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York, pp. 237-254.

Volker F., 1999. “Global Security after the Cold War” in Preparing for Peace, Praeger Publishers, Westport CT, pp. 1-13.

Volker F., 1999. “Learning Peace: Value Orientation of West Point Cadets” in Preparing for peace, Praeger Publishers, Westport CT, pp. 87-115.

Volker F., 1999. “Military Identity: Old Ammo in New Weapons?” in Preparing for peace, Praeger Publishers, Westport CT, pp. 39-67.

Volker, F., 1999. “Duty, Honor, Country: The West Point Experience” in Preparing for peace, Praeger Publishers, Westport CT, pp. 67-87.

Woodward, R., 2000. “Warrior Heroes and Little Green Men: Soldiers, Military Training, and the Construction of Rural Masculinities”, Rural Sociology, vol. 65, no. 4, pp. 640-65.

Zimbardo, Philip G. Maslach, C. and Craig Haney. 2000, ”Reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment: Genesis, Transformations, Consequences”, In Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm, T. Blass (ed.), Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ:.

Additional Reading

Anderson, B., 1995 (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, London.

Abdullah, I. and Patrick M., 1998. “The revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone: A Revolt of the Lumpen Proletariat” in African Guerrillas, Christopher Clapham (ed), James Currey Ltd, Oxford.

Allen, T. and Vlassenroot, K. (eds.) The Lord's Resistance Army: myth and reality. Zed Books, London, UK. (especially page 93-187).

Arendt, H., 1994 (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Penguin, Harmondsworth.

Azam, J. and Hoeffler, A., 2002. “Violence Against Civilians in Civil Wars: Looting or Terror?” Journal of Peace Research vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 461-485.

Banks, M., 1996. Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions, Routledge, London.

Barth, F., 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, George Allen and Unwin, London.

Bettelheim, B., 1991 (1st ed. 1960). The Informed Heart: A Study of the Psychological Consequences of Living Under Extreme Fear and Terror. Penguin, London.

Bird, C., 1999-09-03. “KLA to Give Birth to Kosovo’s New Army”, The Guardian.

Brubaker, R., 2004. Ethnicity Without Groups, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.

Brænder, M., 2009. Justifying the Ultimate Sacrifice: Civil and Military Religion in Frontline Blogs. Forlaget Politica, Aarhus.

Caforio, G., 2003. “Military Officer Education” in Handbook of the Sociology of the Military, Caforio, G. ed., Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York, pp. 255-278.

Campbell, D. J. and Campbell, K. M., 2010. “Soldiers as Police Officers/ Police Officers as Soldiers: Role Evolution and Revolution in the United States”, Armed Forces & Society, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 327-350.

Caselli, F. and Coleman, J., 2006. On the Theory of Ethnic Conflict, Mimeo, LSE.

Castells, M., 1997. The Power of Identity, vol. 2, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 5-67.

Connor, W., 1994. Ethnonationalism: The quest for understanding. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ.

Dalby. S., 2008. “Warrior geopolitics: Gladiator, Black Hawk Down and The Kingdom of Heaven”, Political Geography, vol. 27 pp. 439-455.

Ehrenreich, B., 1997. Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War, Metropolitan Books, New York.

Eriksen, T., 1993. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. Pluto Press, London.

Fearon, J. and Laitin, D. 2003. ”Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War” American Political Science Review vol. 97 no. 1, pp. 75-90.

Fearon, J. and Laitin. D., 1996.“Explaining Interethnic Cooperation”, American Political Science Review vol. 90, no. 4, pp. 715-735.

Gilligan, J., 1999. “The Emotions and Morality of Violence (Shame)” in Violence: Reflections on Our Deadliest Epidemic, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, pp. 103-136.

Gilley, B., 2004. “Against the Concept of Ethnic Conflict”, Third World Quarterly vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 1155-1166.

Gil-White, F. J., 1999. “How Thick is Blood? The Plot Thickens…: If Ethnic Actors are Primordialists, What Remains of the Circumstantialist/Primordialist Controversy?”, Ethnic and Racial Studies vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 789-820.

Gil-White, F. J., 2001. “Are Ethnic Groups Biological ‘Species’ to the Human Brain?”, Current Anthropology vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 515-554.

Gourevitch, P., 1998. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: stories from Rwanda, Picador.

Henriksen, R., 2010. “The Character of War and the Nature of Combat” in The Character of War in the 21ST Century, Coker. C., and Holmqvist-Jonsäter. C. (eds.), Routledge, London, pp. 9-27.

Horowitz, Donald., 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict, University of California Press, Berkeley CA.

Huntington, S., 1993. “The Clash of Civilizations”, Foreign Affairs, vol. 72 no. 3, summer, pp. 22-49.

Human Rights Watch, 1999. “The Rwandan Patriotic Front” Human Rights Watch Report.

Iweala, U., 2005. Beasts of No Nation, Harper Collins Publishers, New York.

Kalyvas, S., 2003. “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’: Action and Identity in Civil Wars”, Perspectives on Politics vol. 1 no. 3, pp. 475-494.

Kalyvas, St. and Kocher, M. A., 2007. “Ethnic Cleavages and Irregular War: Iraq and Vietnam”, Politics and Society vol. 35 no. 2, pp. 183-223.

Keen, D., 2002. ‘“Since I Am A Dog, Beware My Fangs”: Beyond A ‘Rational Violence’ Framework In The Sierra Leonean War’, Crisis States Programme Working Paper 14.

King, A., 2004. “The Ethos of the Royal Marines: The Precise Application of Will”, in Independent Report Commissioned by the Commandant, Commando Training Centre, Royal Marines, Lympstone.

Kiszely, J., 2007. “Post-modern challenges for modern warriors”, The Shrivenham Papers, No. 5. Defence Academy of the United Kingdom.

Kreidie, L.H. and Monroe. K.R., 2002. ‘‘Psychological Boundaries and Ethnic Conflict: How Identity Constrained Choice and Worked to Turn Ordinary People into Perpetrators of Ethnic Violence During the Lebanese Civil War”, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, vol.16, no. 1, pp. 5-36.

Kuperman, A.J., 2004. “Provoking genocide: a revised history of the Rwandan Patriotic Front”, Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 6, no. 1, Pp. 61-84.

Lary, D., 1985. “Bad Iron”, in Warlord Soldiers: Chinese Common Soldiers 1911-1937, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 83-91.

Lemarchard, R., 1995. "Rwanda: the Rationality of Genocide" in Ethnic Hatred: Genocide in Rwanda, Igwara, Obi. ASEN Publishing, London.

LeVine, Victor T., 1997. “Conceptualizing ‘Ethnicity’ and ‘Ethnic Conflict’: A Controversy Revisited”, Studies in Comparative International Development vol. 32 no. 2, pp. 45-75.

Lorenz, K., 1996 (1963). On Aggression, Routledge, London.

Mamdani, M., 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ.

Mamdani, M., 1996. “From Conquest to Consent as the Basis of State Formation: Reflections on Rwanda”, New Left Review, Vol. A, No 216.

Mkandawire, T., 2000. “The Terrible Toll of Post-Colonial ‘Rebel Movements’ in Africa: Towards an Explanation of the Violence against the Peasantry” Journal of Modern African Studies vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 181-205.

Miller, L. and Moskos, C. 1995. “Humanitarians or Warriors?: Race, Gender, and Combat Status in Operation Restore Hope”, Armed Forces and Society, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 615-637.

Osiel, M., 1999. Obeying Orders: Atrocity, Military discipline, and the Law of War, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ,, (especially chapters 11, 12, 13 and 14).

Pick, D., 1993. War Machine: The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age. Yale University Press, London.

Prividera, L. C. and Howard III J. W., 2006. “Masculinity, Whiteness, and the Warrior Hero: Perpetuating the Strategic Rhetoric of U.S.Nationalism and the Marginalization of Women”, Women and Language, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 29-37.

Prunier, G., 1998. “The Rwandan Patriotic Front” in African Guerrillas, C. Clapham, ed., Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN.

Prunier, G., 1995. The Rwanda Crisis, 1959-1994: History of a Genocide, Hurst and Company, London. (Especially chapters 6 and 7). Pp. 192-280.

Rodríguez, MPO., 2011. “The FDLR as an Obstacle to Peace in the DRC”, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 176-182.

Rusagara, F., 2011. “Unconventional Challenges and Nontraditional Roles for Armed Forces: The Case for Rwanda”, Prism, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 107-120.

Schomerus, M., 2010. “A terrorist is not a person like me: an interview with Joseph Kony” in The lords Resistance Army: Myth and Reality, Allen, T. and Vlassenroot, K, eds., Zed Books, pp. 113-131.

Sen, A., 2008. “Violence, Identity and Poverty”, Journal of Peace Research vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 5-15.

Varshney, A., 2003. “Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Rationality”, Perspectives on Politics vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 85-99.

Verwimp, P. and Verpoorten, M., 2007. “What are all the soldiers going to do? Demobilisation, reintegration and employment in Rwanda” Conflict, Security and Development, vol. 4, no 1, pp. 39-57.

Zur, J., 1998. “Village Patrols and Their Violence” in Violent Memories: Mayan War Widows in Guatemala, Westview Press, Boulder CO., pp. 93-126.

Faglige forudsætninger: A minimum of a BSc level education in social or political sciences with an interest in military studies, development studies and/or conflict studies.

Eksamensform: Free assignment/ Written Examination.
Kursus hjemmeside:
Undervisnings- sprog: Kun engelsk
Sidst redigeret: 5/11-2012



Københavns Universitet