Mikkel Kronborg | Royal Danish Defence College (original) (raw)

Papers by Mikkel Kronborg

Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies, 2021

Abstract In order for a crew in the Royal Danish Navy to become a highly capable and professional... more Abstract
In order for a crew in the Royal Danish Navy to become a highly capable and professional team, it must go through a challenging training program with the Danish sea riders. The sea riders mainly focus on how ship crews handle the communicative and technical procedures that are crucial in emergencies like naval war and marine accidents. However, sea riders might overlook how and why social interactions affect the learning outcome from the exercises they conduct. This article uses Erving Goffman’s micro-sociological theory to inquire into the social interactional dynamics of maritime military exercises containing both fictive scenarios and role-playing. The article concludes by suggesting six reflective questions for sea riders concerning the social dynamics governing sea rider practice. These questions can help sea riders understand the importance of social interaction and in ultimately improve learning outcomes of maritime military exercises.

Resumé
For at en besætning i det danske Søværn kan udvikle sig til et kompetent og professionelt team, skal besætningen igennem et udfordrende træningsforløb med de danske searidere. Dette træningsforløb fokuserer primært på, hvordan skibet håndterer tekniske og kommunikative procedurer i sømilitære konflikter og havarier. Der er dog en risiko for, at searidere overser, hvordan og hvorfor social interaktion påvirker læringsudbyttet fra de øvelser, de står i spidsen for. Denne artikel benytter Erving Goffmans mikrosociologiske teori til at undersøge sociale og interaktionelle dynamikker i militær maritim træning, som indeholder både fiktive scenarier og rollespil. Undersøgelsen munder ud i seks refleksionsspørgsmål omhandlende de sociale dynamikker, der påvirker searidernes daglige arbejde. De seks spørgsmål kan hjælpe searidere med at forstå vigtigheden af social interaktion og i sidste ende forbedre læringsudbyttet af militær maritim træning.

Nøgleord: Militær træning; searidere; social interaktion; mikrosociologi; Goffman; rollespil; Søværnet

Keywords: Military training, sea riders, social interaction, microsociology, Goffman, role-play, Royal Danish Navy

Dansk Sociologi, 2017

English abstract This article begins with a critique of a number of sociological studies of vio... more English abstract

This article begins with a critique of a number of sociological studies of violence that use cultural or social background variables as primary explanations for the causes of violence. Sociological studies of violence rarely analyze violence itself or violent situations as complex and multifaceted social actions that need to be theorized. As a partial response to this lack of theory, the article presents the French sociologist Luc Boltanski’s »approximated outline« of a theory of violence from the book Love and Justice as Competences. However, the article identifies a fundamental conceptual problem in Boltanski’s approach, and offers a suggestion for overcoming it by integrating a phenomenological distinction between locative, raptive and autotelic violence. The article attempts to reconstruct the foundation of a pragmatic theory of violence based, first and foremost, on a distinction between three physical forms of violence. The purpose of this reconstruction is to render French pragmatic sociology useful in studies of situations in which violence is present, and to encourage studies of a form of action that has largely been neglected by sociology.

Dansk abstract

Denne artikel tager afsæt i en kritik af sociologiske studier af vold, der peger på kulturelle og sociale baggrundsvariable, når voldelige gerninger skal forklares. Disse studier analyserer sjældent volden som en kompleks og mangefacetteret social handling, der kalder på teoretiske
forklaringer. Som et delvist svar på denne forsømmelse introduceres til den franske sociolog Luc Boltanskis »tilnærmede udkast« til en handlingsteori om vold, som er en del af en større handlingssociologi, der præsenteres i bogen Love and Justice as Competences. Der peges dog på et grundlæggende konceptuelt problem i Boltanskis udkast til en teori om vold, som forsøges afhjulpet ved at integrere en fænomenologisk distinktion mellem henholdsvis lokativ, raptiv og autotelisk vold heri. Hensigten er at rekonstruere grundlaget for en pragmatisk sociologi om vold – funderet i en distinktion mellem (først og fremmest) voldens fysiske former. Formålet med denne rekonstruktion er at gøre fransk pragmatisk sociologi anvendelig i studiet af situationer, hvor vold spiller en rolle. Herved åbnes op for sociologisk analyse af en handlingsform, som har været
tildelt sparsom opmærksomhed i sociologien.

Keywords: Luc Boltanski, violence, French pragmatic sociology, Jan Philipp Reemtsma.

Thesis Chapters by Mikkel Kronborg

Towards a Pragmatic Sociology of Violence, 2015

This thesis explores how a pragmatic theory of violence can be developed within Luc Boltanski’s s... more This thesis explores how a pragmatic theory of violence can be developed within Luc Boltanski’s sociology of regimes of action positioned in the overall framework of French pragmatic sociology. The thesis takes its outset in Boltanski’s approximate outline of a regime of violence presented in Love and Justice as Competences (2012) and points out a number of conceptual ambiguities in Boltanski’s regime of violence. The conceptual ambiguities are then discussed and clarified through an integration of Jan Philip Reemtsma’s phenomenological distinction between locative-, raptive-, and autotelic violence. This distinction denotes violence as a non-consensual, primarily, physical assault on another’s body (2012). Overall, the thesis combines French pragmatic sociology with German sociology of violence in order to emphasize our shared understandings and ways of evaluating forms, things and persons in violence. In this relation, the thesis introduces two basic human competences of violence: ‘the competence of evaluating force potentials’ and ‘the competence of evaluating vulnerability of the body’. Methodologically, the thesis mirrors elements of Boltanski’s methodological strategies used to develop the regime of justice and love in order to formalize the principles that can be said to structure a model of a regime of violence based on the distinction between locative-, raptive-, and autotelic violence. The thesis then centers on the important twilight between violence and justice by emphasizing an understanding of different forms, elements and zones of violence in relation to Boltanski’s theoretical model in On Justification and to the concept of the state monopoly on violence. Finally, the thesis presents four empirical case studies of violence as presented in different records of judgement from recent Danish trials, which are then “confronted” with the (extended) regime of violence, after which the “fitness” of the theory and the ambiguity of some of the concepts are discussed.