Paper short abstract:

Within the contemporary Swedish Armed Forces, critique, contingency, and disruption seem to be at stake in ways that are decidedly timely. This presentation explores how the military in fact intimates particular challenges to the anthropological conceptual toolkit, and it asks how we could approach such contexts in analytically productive ways.

Paper long abstract:

Cultural critique has endured as a powerful mode of anthropological inquiry. The strategy to disrupt the present and "make it strange" has proved particularly productive, and abundant examples illustrate its continuous potential within the discipline. Today, however, an increasing number of contexts outside anthropology have also come to encompass facets of this approach. The contemporary Swedish Armed Forces constitutes one example. "Culture" has for instance become an important tool for the military in their attempt to reform and rethink old assumptions. Furthermore, an increasingly self-critical approach has emerged through new collaborative forms where military personnel work with NGOs such as Amnesty International. These varieties of "critique" certainly seem productive for the military. Yet it remains unclear what a critical mode of anthropological inquiry into this kind of situation would look like. A common saying within the Swedish Armed Forces is that they tend to do things "fort men fel" (fast but faulty). Perhaps as anthropologists we should instead stop here for a moment to think. In this presentation, then, my focus diverges from recent debates on the relationship between anthropology and the military. I am interested in the military primarily as a space where critique, contingency, and disruption seem to be at stake in ways that are decidedly timely. More specifically, the presentation explores how the contemporary Swedish military in fact intimates particular challenges to the anthropological conceptual toolkit. It asks how anthropology could approach such contexts in an analytically productive way that retains the intellectual vitality of cultural critique.