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

Abstract

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.