Co-ordinator: Dr. Karl Ydén, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Papers presented at the 10th ERGOMAS conference in Stockholm, June 22-26, 2009.
For more details, please contact the presenters directly.

• Christopher Dandeker ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) (Department of War Studies, King's College London, UK). Strategic narratives and the use of force: the case of Afghanistan
• Robert Egnell ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) & Karl Yden ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) (Swedish National Defence College). It's fun to shoot some people! Violence, legitimacy and civil-military relations
• Bengt Abrahamsson ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) (Professor emeritus, Swedish National Defence College). Complex Peace Operations and the Clausewitz Controversy. The Quest for Doctrine
• Eyal Ben-Ari ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel). Changing Models of Military Violence? The Swedish Armed Forces since the End of the Cold War
• Anthony King ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) (University of Exeter, UK). Doing Violence: a sociology of twentieth and twenty first century military
• Peter Bradley ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) (The Royal Military College of Canada). How Military Culture Can Contribute to Immoral Behaviour

The military is peculiar in that the profession spends much more time than other professions preparing for its core activity rather than performing it. This working Group studies the place of violence in military organisations: how military personnel are socialised and trained in its application including the moral and legal norms that underpin it. It is interested in the place of violence in the history and culture of the armed forces, including the extent to which a military has a rich experience of the use of violence or is reliant on abstract and, relatively speaking, untested notions.

The WG is concerned with the ways in which military violence - or more properly the legal use of force - plays a role indifferent kinds of military missions and the effects of its use on those who use it, those to whom it is applied and other observers and interested parties who have access to the theatre of war through the media and processes of 'global surveillance'. Also, the WG wishes to explore the consequences of the use of force on the health and well being of military personnel and their families once soldiers have completed their mission or deployment. In the WG we wish to combine the insights of military sociology, ethics, law and where appropriate, philosophy and cultural studies.