Table Of ContentNEW SECURITY CHALLENGES
Series Editor: George Christou
BORDIEUAN FIELD
THEORY AS AN
INSTRUMENT
FOR MILITARY
OPERATIONAL
ANALYSIS
Håkan Gunneriusson
New Security Challenges
Series editor
George Christou
Department of Politics and International Relations
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
The last decade has demonstrated that threats to security vary greatly in
their causes and manifestations and that they invite interest and demand
responses from the social sciences, civil society, and a very broad policy
community. In the past, the avoidance of war was the primary objective,
but with the end of the Cold War the retention of military defence as the
centrepiece of international security agenda became untenable. There
has been, therefore, a significant shift in emphasis away from traditional
approaches to security to a new agenda that talks of the softer side of secu-
rity, in terms of human security, economic security, and environmental
security. The topical New Security Challenges series reflects this pressing
political and research agenda.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14732
Håkan Gunneriusson
Bordieuan Field
Theory as an
Instrument for
Military Operational
Analysis
Håkan Gunneriusson
Department of Military Studies
Swedish Defence University
Stockholm, Sweden
New Security Challenges
ISBN 978-3-319-65351-8 ISBN 978-3-319-65352-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-65352-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951520
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017. This book is an open access publication.
Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits
use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as
you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the
Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material
is not included in the book’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not
permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain
permission directly from the copyright holder.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Pattern adapted from an Indian cotton print produced in the 19th century
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my children, Saga and Axel and my loving wife Christina
P
reface
Somewhere, there is an armed conflict. Who are “we”, who are “they”
and what is actually happening in the operational area? If these questions
can be answered, one has taken great steps towards being able to pre-
dict the unfolding of the events ahead in a conflict. The following book
is presenting tools to help address these questions for primarily military
organisations, but also for any actor collective or individual dealing with
international conflicts. The approach is sociological and the examples are
thought to serve as inspiration for others to work foremost with the per-
spective but perhaps also with the methods. The purpose of this book
is to give researchers in the field of war studies and neighbouring disci-
plines inspiration and guidelines on how to apply field theory on subjects
dealing with conflicts and problems associated with conflicts.
Leadership in conflicts are very much based both on experience and
predictions, predictions based on these aforementioned experiences.
These experiences are important in that they have shaped the range of
perspectives which the actor (collective or individual) has, not all experi-
ences are equally important when it comes to making an imprint. This is
natural and often leads the actors correctly, if not they sometimes have
room to adapt, sometimes not. This is the logic of practice through the
ages of military leadership. On the other hand, one of the oldest insti-
tutions in Western Civilisation is the institution of universities. Since
the Enlightenment the universities have been in the service of bringing
vii
viii PREFACE
knowledge into all areas of activities within states and society. Still, socio-
logical perspectives on warfare have often been limited to studying the
conflict from an outside perspective without primarily being interested in
delivering actual tools for the operators engaged in the conflict.
Stockholm, Sweden Håkan Gunneriusson
c
ontents
Part I Theory and Background Field Theory
as an Instrument for Operational Analysis
1 Terms in Search for a Theoretical Definition 3
2 Field Theory 13
3 The Political Field in the Operational Area 27
4 Field Operations as Information Warfare and
Operationalisation of Theory 35
Part II Empirical Example
5 The Pre-war Strategic Situation in the Balkans
from a Field Theory Perspective 51
6 The Events in 1990 63
7 The Events in 1991 75
ix
x CONTENTS
8 The Events in 1992 89
9 Epilogue: Beyond 1992 99
10 Conclusions of the Empirical Example 107
11 Post Scriptum: Hybrid Warfare and the Yugoslavian
Blueprint 111
Bibliography 119
Index 121
