Raluca – Oana Csernatoni
PhD Candidate
IRES, CEU, Budapest
Title:
A Bourdieusean Analysis of a Practice-Oriented Strategic Culture
The Romanian Security and Defence Field
Working Draft
Abstract:
Strategic culture and Europeanization scholarships have been mainly concerned with explaining inertia and change
in the security field of European Union (EU) member states. The Bourdieusean-inspired critique allows
complementing and integrating these perspectives in order to develop a practice-oriented concept of strategic
culture. The analytical problem of strategic culture versus human agency, reflected in the broader International
Relations (IR) literature as structure versus agency debate, is addressed through the Bourdieusean concept of
habitus: a system of long-lasting dispositions inculcated by structural conditionings, an internalized code of
principles acquired through socialization practices that do not determine human action, but they orient strategic
behaviour. The habitus offers an analytical purchase in examining actors’ behaviours as neither solely based on
instrumental rationality principle, nor driven exclusively by ideational normative reflexivity. A new concept of
strategic culture influenced by Bourdieu’s theory of culture as practice takes the following view: it analyzes
strategic culture in its everyday security practice manifestation and accounts for a continuously transformative
character of this process. To paraphrase an expression from a well-known painting by René Magritte, “Ceci n’est
pas un pipe”, the contention could be made that “this is not strategic culture”. What one perceives as a
homogenous body understood as strategic culture, is merely a fixed image of a continuously challenged reality of
security processes and practices. The concern is with the way representations come to be taken for “reality”,
without any consideration of how the process of representation is transformed through every day practice. In this
perspective, interests and identities are produced through social practices at the grass roots of everyday security
and defence policy practical manifestations. The analysis is less concerned with measuring or explaining monolithic
strategic culture outputs by looking at national cultures or rational interests. Instead, it resorts to the case of the
Romanian security field to explore the concentration of actors, their strategies and the structural underpinning
that made the policy outputs possible in the first place. The new concept proposed by the present paper is that of
the transitional habitus, in more explicit terms, an oxymoronic concept that attempts to capture the constantly
shifting and negotiated character of Romanian security actors’ habituses in transitional periods and security and
defence reforms. While the strategic culture literature views culture as a unitary and semi-permanent body of
values, interests, and beliefs, the paper proposes a theoretical conception of strategic culture that is more openended and diffuse as a result of its constantly negotiated character. The concept of transitional habitus best
expresses the clashing reality in Romania’s transitional security field: adaptation to change in itself becomes a
habitual disposition embodied by security actors as a social “survival” tool, reflecting the shared social and cultural
context of post-Communist Romania.
Bourdieu’s theory of praxis – European Union – Romanian Security And Defence Filed – Strategic Culture – The
Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) – The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
1
Introduction
The paper explains how a Bourdieusean theory of praxis can be applied to the understanding of
strategic culture and how Bourdieu’s conceptual grid, i.e. field, capital, professional habitus, distinction,
doxa, power, genealogy, reproduction, and resentment, can provide new ways of interpreting strategic
culture and the security actors’ socialization processes. The paper draws on empirical data from a
longitudinal study of Romania’s security field in order to discuss alternative interpretations that go
beyond the traditional understandings of strategic culture. In the process of security production, the
notion of strategic culture was traditionally defined as a system of shared values and understandings,
which are reinforced through practices, skills and attitudes and passed on from one generation of
security actors to the next, by becoming integrated into the operational culture of the military core. The
conventional wisdom is that as new recruits or personnel enter the ranks of security actors, they adopt
the conservative framework of established military practice. Successful socialization often entails a
personal metamorphosis and security actors learn the procedures, techniques of security production
and become socialized with an already established professional doxa1, a set of core values and discourse
that a specific professional field articulates as its fundamental principles, and which are considered to be
intrinsically true and mandatory.
Nevertheless, by analyzing the experience of security and military reform in Romania over its
transitional period in the post-Cold War context, the paper demonstrates that Romania’s strategic
culture can be much more varied and much less determined than the theoretically-driven and
conventional wisdom would allow. More importantly, by correlating the security actors’ experience to
contemporary changes in the organizational and political conditions of security production, the paper
shows that strategic culture is much less homogenous and much more vulnerable to change than usually
assumed. More generally, the case study of Romania’s security field provides an alternative
understanding of socialization processes when security cultures are in transition and amenable to
innovation and reform. The principal concern is that traditional concepts of strategic culture failed to
account for variations in culture within and between police forces, treated security actors as passive
recipients of cultural inputs, divorced cultural practices from the structural underpinnings, and fell short
of providing a theory of cultural change.
The new concept proposed by the present paper is that of the transitional habitus, in more
explicit terms, an oxymoronic concept that attempts to capture the constantly changing and negotiated
character of Romanian security actors’ habituses in transitional periods and security and defence
reforms. While the strategic culture literature views culture as a unitary and semi-permanent body of
values, interests, and beliefs, the paper proposes a theoretical conception of strategic culture that is
more open-ended and diffuse as a result of its constantly negotiated character. The concept of
transitional habitus best expresses the clashing reality in Romania’s transitional security field:
adaptation to change in itself becomes a habitual disposition embodied by security actors as a social
“survival” tool, reflecting the shared social and cultural context of post-Communist Romania.
Conventional models of socialization have been inclined to envisage the process of socialization
in transitional contexts as rather homogenous, in which the novice security actor fits in within the
dominant strategic culture. The value added of rethinking socialization processes along Bourdieusean
theoretical lines of field and habitus is that they can encompass elements of variability and contingency,
1
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, 1977, 159-170
2
salient in transitional political contexts, and account for deviations from the usual socialization paths.
The habitus is especially amenable for describing the system of dispositions that individuals acquire, first
through personal history and experience, and later by entering the ranks of a security field. The habitus
is “Systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as
structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and
representations which can be objectively “regulated” and “regular” without in anyway being the
product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious
aiming at ends, or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attain them, and being all this,
collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor.”2 For a
better understanding of the habitus, several elements need to be taken into consideration: it integrates
several elements of cultural knowledge, uncritical assumptions, unquestioned definitions, shared values,
as well as physical bearing. Under normal conditions, the new security actors that enter the security
field adjust their habitus to fit with the existing cultural patterns, so as to develop a stable set of
dispositions that engender consistent ways of acting.
While until this point there is indeed a tendency to suppose that Bourdieu seems to favour
structural conditionings, be them internalized cultural schemata such as the habitus or social structures
to which actors seem to adapt to and develop a so-called “feel for the game”, the concepts of field and
capital become crucial in tilting the analytical balance towards the agency of actors. Beyond the feel for
the game developed as a consequence of the habitus, the field delineates the subject positions of
actors3. From newcomers with very low capital to hierarchically superior actors with high degrees of
capital in terms of knowledge and experience (cultural capital), loyalty and popularity (social capital),
reputation and respect (symbolic capital), the field is populated by heterogeneous power positions. New
actors need to develop a doxic4 experience, an almost unconscious submission to a supposedly
unchangeable set of values and rules within a professional field. It has been demonstrated though that
such values and rules have an undoubtedly arbitrary and contingent nature according to changes in the
professional and social environment. Thus, even though the habitus tends to become entrenched and
relatively stable, the field undergoes shifts in power positions due to external and internal changes, such
as transitional periods and reforms and the ways in which different capitals vary in their value and
practical utility. This is what Bourdieu means by “regulated improvisation”5, i.e. the habitus is made up
as actors act and it is informed but not completely controlled by past understandings of the field.
The relation between the field and habitus operates at two levels: the field conditions the
habitus that is the “product of the embodiment of the immanent necessity of a field” 6 and the habitus
constitutes the field as it provides the cultural frames for making sense of the field. The habitus
embodies what security professionals might call as common knowledge and a set of professional skills.
While long-term members tend to take their habitus for granted, because “when habitus encounters a
social work of which it is the product, it is like a “fish in water””7. As Bourdieu mentions, “agent do do,
much more often than if they were behaving randomly”8, being guide by their practical sense. But when
2
Pierre Bourdieu, 1977, 72
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, 1977
4
Bourdieu, 1977, 159-170
5
Bourdieu, 1977, 78
6
Pierre Bouridieu and Loïc Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, The University of Chicago Press, 1992,
127
7
Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, 127
8
Pierre Bordieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, Stanford University Press, 1990, 11
3
3
new actors enter the field, they carry with them the habitus which is the result of the field they formerly
populated. Where there is a stable organisational culture, new recruits tend to adapt to already
established cultural patterns, but when the field is in transition, there is much more leeway for
innovation. In the case of Romania’s security field, a new brand of consultancy-oriented technocrats,
with a wide range of expertise stemming from their foreign academic training or European Union policy
practice, tend to challenge the already established security structures and have become more successful
to carve niches and demands for new ways of security making.
Such actors become extremely reflective and aware of the power dynamics in the field as well as
the socialization processes and resort to strategic calculations to shift their position in the field and do
not merely rely like automatons on the established habitus. New international security contexts spell
out new marketable skills sets that define the current “good practice”. Hence, if the habitus is
undergoing constant changes and is fragmented, then actors will constantly and cautiously cast an eye
on how the rules of the “game” or “battlefield” may be shifting. The case study also points towards the
fact that successful adaptations in the field do not entail blind following of deeply engrained cultural
markers or rules. On the contrary, for actors to become creative problem-solvers with an independent
agency, they have to deliberately question and battle against their own habitus. A reflective practitioner
of security has tot uplift practice from the thoughtless automatism of his professional habitus. It is not
only about blindly adapting to a homogenous body of rules or values, nor solely utilizing such rules and
values as strategic tools. It is about learning the art of doing security, i.e. security practice, by taking into
account both sides of the coin.
All in all, actors do not merely adapt to transitional changes but become proactively involved in
either defending the old habitus or changing it. In transitional societies the chances for a certain
professional habitus in the security field to reproduce itself into a status-quo arrangement, without
being challenged, are very small. So what type of agency is envisaged by Bourdieu? The question in itself
hides a certain misleading element, because it is not only agency in itself that needs to be labelled or
defined, but, according to Bourdieu, any definition of agency without taking into account structures
makes no sense in practice. If actors are constituted through their relation to structural conditions and
other actors, then they are never “free actors” in the liberal sense, due to the fact that their capacity to
act arises out of, and cannot be divorced from, structural underpinnings. Hence, agency is not situated
simply in bounded actors but within the wider set of social structure and relations that “make up”9 the
actors. Thus, the idea of agency must be broadened to consider a relational perspective with structures
and other actors, this understanding being the closest to how everyday practice works, where it is
mostly difficult to flash out where agency starts and structure ends in the intersubjective mesh. When
the habitus affects agency, then the end game is to take into account the structuring principles of a field
so as to acquire a deeper understanding of agency and identity as well, and how performativity and
practice factor into the picture.
The fallacies of strategic culture literature
Most models of security socialization found in the strategic culture literature typically assumed
the existence of relatively homogenous and stable cultural systems in which new security actors become
9
J. Brück, “Body Metaphors and Technologies of Transformation in the English Middle and Late Bronze Age”, in J.
Brück (ed.) Bronze Age Landscapes. Tradition and Transformation, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 655
4
acculturated. Processes of socialization are portrayed as dependent on the socialization tactics
employed by the different security environments and the learning and adaptation on the part of new
security actors, but few models take into account the hands-on role played by such actors in the
socialization process. The problem of most of the positivist-inspired strategic culture (SC) literature is
that it does not offer a fully-fledged theoretical alternative to positivist frameworks of foreign policy
behaviour analysis, being considered more or less a complementary approach that introduces nonmaterial variables as intervening/explanatory indicators without constitutive or foundational potential.
In this case, the role of the social, cultural, ideational variables is rendered secondary through the
conceptualization of ideas/norms as objects in causality chains and not intersubjectively constituted by
discourse and social practice. By emphasising the analytical separateness of ideas and interests or by
over-emphasising and over-determining ideas over interest and vice versa, or by proposing neopositivist/limited conceptions of non-material factors (the second generation of SC literature), such
approaches circumvent the practical dimension and the mutual constitutive character of interests, ideas,
and norms.
In terms of the concept of strategic culture as it is presented by the literature, this research
argues against a view of culture as a unitary body of values and beliefs and proposes a conception of
strategic culture that is more open-ended and diffuse, precisely because of its constantly negotiated
character. Several shortcomings of the three generations of strategic culture10 should be mentioned: in
the case of the first generation, the concept of strategic culture faults with a monolithic cultural
determinism that mechanically reinforces a self-referential argumentation – different national cultures
produce different strategic behaviours; in the case of the second generation, the concept of strategic
culture proposes an unclear account of instrumentality that on the one hand attempts to reassert the
role of power and hegemony and on the other hand it casts the strategic culture as merely a
manipulative/strategic tool in the hands of decision-makers – strategic culture is a neat and tidy
reflection of interested decision-makers and strategic action is not determined by strategic cultural
discourse; in the case of the third generation, the concept of strategic culture is narrowed to the mesolevel of institutional analysis with a focus on organizational culture as the independent variable –
strategic culture is conveniently brought down to the level of organization and pitted against neorealist
interpretation, but it retains an inherent inability to address strategic action that may not be influence
by cultural variables.
If organizational culture determined the interests of actors that circumvent and delineate their
options in terms of policy-making, how is a hierarchy between such interests substantiated in specific
strategic choices? Or how can it account for cross-variation between preferences when decision-makers
occupy different positions within the security field? The mistake of the strategic culture literature is to
assume the one-way, teleological relation between culture in its broader homogenizing understanding
(the first generation of SC literature) and organization culture in its narrower understanding (the third
generation of SC literature) and security behaviour. Here, strategic culture is either seen as foundational
and essentialist by comprising general national categories such as history, language, identity, or it
operates in the same manner at the meso-level of institutions and organizations.
The afore-mentioned analysis points to one of the more obvious fallacies of the existing
literature on strategic culture that is the determinist and reductionist definition of culture, the
10
Alastair Iain Johnston, “Thinking about Strategic Culture” in International Security, Vol. 19, No.4 (Spring, 1995),
32-64.
5
definitions being drawn from outdated and realist/state-centric perspective in security studies. Hence,
the discussion is whether cultural variables can become constitutive of research agendas and not merely
intervening variables that help explain gaps in the mainstream literature. Moreover, there seems to be
an overall reluctance to draw from the conceptual input of sociological and anthropological theoretical
efforts, ignoring behavioural variables and more “thick” understandings of culture. Therefore, the
shortcomings of the strategic culture literature11 and the work of authors such as Gray, Klein and
Johnston have already been criticized, important gaps being identified as comprising, first and foremost,
a superficial take on the notion of culture from a social sciences perspective, especially from a
sociological interpretation.
Thus, the analysis of strategic culture in the IR literature tradition is tributary to reification
practices, where the end product, i.e. security behaviour, is an effect of culture or balancing hard power
self-interests seen as natural objects, discussed as if they were material things. Hence by applying an
ontological priority to such objects as either causes or ends within teleological chains, the analysis
approaches the research problem from both ends and it will thus negate the relational, middle-way
dimensions of both practice and discourse. By ignoring security practices, the research agenda of the
strategic culture encounters an interesting illusio, i.e. it claims that what is done determined the doing,
when in fact the opposite is true12 – practice is not explained based on what is done. Iver B. Neumann
and Henrikki Heikka have already characterized the strategic culture literature as being too superficial in
its take on the notion of culture, as being too reified and outdated in comparison to conceptualizations
from other fields in social sciences. Secondly, by ascribing material, concrete reality to an abstract
notion, the literature on strategic culture still falls short of proposing a coherent and empirically-inspired
analytical apparatus.
Here, a Bourdieusean inspired analytical framework is capable of identifying the “carriers of
culture” and the actors with the symbolic power in their respective power/security fields, pinpointing
the interplay between these competing actors and groups over the monopoly of security articulations,
their symbolic positions within the security field, the existing hierarchy and its possible toppling, the
conditions that lead to shifts in the status-quo or to its permanence. The Bourdieusean framework is
able to encompass the “entrepreneurs” capitals in their material and symbolic dimensions, as well as
the dynamic mobility of such actors across fields and upward on the hierarchy ladder of power politics.
Thus, a political sociological motivated research, drawing on the rich conceptual apparatus
proposed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, would serve a double folded role, it will rectify the
empirical mishaps of the literature and it will reconceptualise the notion of culture and hence strategic
culture. The analytical problem in the strategic culture literature between strategic culture and human
agency is precisely reflected in the structure versus agency debate, which Bourdieu manages to
accommodate with the concept of habitus. The definition of the habitus, as already mentioned, goes as
follows: it is a system of long-lasting dispositions inculcated by structural conditionings, an internalised
code of principles acquired through socialization practices that does not determine human action but it
orients strategic behaviour. Along these line, the relation between the triptych of agency, structure, and
11
Iver B. Neumann and Henrikki Heikka, “Grand Strategy, Strategic Culture, Practice. The Social Roots of Nordic
Defence” Cooperation and Conflict vol.40 / no.1 (2005), 5-23.
12
Didier Bigo, “Ethnicity, State, and World-System: Comments on the Ways of Making History” in International
Political Science Review, Vol. 19, No. 3, (1998), 305-310.
6
intersubjectivity needs to be clarified, so as to better understand Bourdie’s stand point and supposed
middle ground within the debate.
Strategic culture as practice
The present paper proposes an alternative logic to the “either/or” logic that conditioned most of
the strategic culture literature, by emphasizing either the importance of structure – strategic culture
over agency, or the importance of agency – security actors over strategic culture. The Bourdieusean
framework presented in the paper takes into account the structural conditionings and cultural
knowledge of security making and emphasized at the same time the centrality of agency in linking the
security field and habitus with everyday security practice. Instead of utilizing monolithic concepts of
unified and coherent national strategic cultures that determine policy-making and action, or had-core
realist approaches that cast strategic culture as merely a strategizing tool in the hands of superhuman
security agents, Bourdieu’s theory of practice provides a particularly useful alternative approach to
understanding how security is produced.
Bourdieu tried to surpass the dichotomy between structure and agency with a middle ground
theory that attempts to overcome the dichotomy between structure and agency. For this end, Bourdieu
resorts to the terms habitus and field as the core elements of his theory. The prompting elements to
which Bourdieu reacted were two leading French Sociologists and movements: Sartre and existentialism,
and Levi-Strauss and structuralism. Bourdieu’s position between the agent and the structure debate is
that of a constructivist structuralism13, namely there is interplay between the agent and the structure:
the social field is made of objective structures of culture and language (1.structuralism), built by agents
(2. constructivist). To understand the workings of the social world according to Bourdieu, a bifocal
analysis is needed, a “duplex look” on the objective life (structure) and the subjective life (individuals).
The very tension14 between constructivism and structuralism is used to understand the dialectics
between the two theoretical poles as if they are played out in social practices. According to Bourdieu,
there is a first level of structure, the material social world that is objective, “objective structures
independent of the consciousness and will of agents, which are capable of guiding and constraining their
practices or their representations”15. Bourdieu identifies a second structural level, by emphasizing the
importance of agents’ structured “schemes of perception, thought, and action”16, i.e. habitus. The secret
in understanding Bourdieu’s approach is to be enduring with the minute description of the ways through
which both structural levels are being constructed and how actors uses them strategically in different
social fields. The intention is not to conflate the two sides of the debate into an intersubjective mesh like
Gidden’s theory of structuration17. Bourdieu, in his attempt to preserve the integrity of both the outside
structure metaphor and the social phenomenology of the subjectivist position, lays emphasis on the
dialectical tension between the field’s “objectified history” and the habitus’s “incorporated history”18.
13
Kenneth Allan, The Social Lens, An Invitation to Social ad Sociological Theory, Pine Forge Press, 2011, 415
Allan, 2011, 430
15
Pierre Bordieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, Stanford University Press, 1990, 113
16
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, 1977, 18
17
Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of a Theory of Structuration, The University of California
Press, 1984
18
Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990, 57-58.
14
7
The field of security and defence, like any other field, is a social space of competitive and
conflictual forces, structured by hierarchies of sanctions (negative capital) and rewards (capital). The
security field exists in a subordinate or dominated position within the field of power; in the case of
Romania it is already established that the security and defence field enjoys a high degree of public trust
(political and symbolic capital) but less governmental support due to a competition over Romania’s
security agenda. In this respect, Romania’s security and defence field is a contested battleground
between different politically powerful segments within the community, the competition being over the
monopoly on dominant conceptions of security, between the military brass per se and the
governmental, police, and political forces. Because of their highly symbolic position in Romanian society
in terms of power and morality, the military have always been vested with a high degree of popular
trust. On top of the necessities of and adaptation pressures after the fall of Communism in the 1990s,
the Romanian security and defence field has been increasingly subject to performance-based
accountability requirements, due to new public spending limitations, international pressures, and
military advancements. Within the security and defence field, actors compete for the control over
different categories of capital or resources. To advance within the military ranks, actors require control
over vast amounts of social capital in the form of support networks that prevent external pressures and
act against arbitrary managerial or governmental practices.
The military metaphor typically involves a strict hierarchical and disciplinary regime that
maintains a stern account of rules and regulations. For the security actors’ upward mobility certain
concessions are made for the accumulation of social capital, which demands keeping rank and
cultivating loyal relationships with fellow and superior officers. Rank plays a consistent role as a visible
and well-recognized social marker and usually trumps cultural capital in the form of information,
knowledge, expertise and competence. In transitional contexts such as reform or meeting adaptational
pressures, cultural capital calls for highly professionalized expertise at an operational level, which can
override rank through individual judgment, localized, specialized responses and discretionary decisions.
Actions can be taken as the situations demand and then rationalized afterwards in terms of available
regulations.
As well, while raw physical capital, physical resistance and training, tolerance of hard conditions,
was typically assumed as a valuable form of capital in the field of security and defence, new skills
become important in a highly professionalized international security context. More sophisticated forms
of symbolic capital skew the stakes of advancement of security actors, emphasis being made on
international projection and more community-oriented security making. The traditional understanding
of the military as providing service only to national states has been without any doubt challenged by
international missions under the aegis of international organizations, such as the EU and the NATO.
The analytical problem in SC literature manifests itself in presenting the objects of analysis in
oppositional terms by mistakenly treating strategic culture as opposed to assumptions of rationality and
without taking into consideration the practical sense of security actors when it comes to moving across
or manipulating structural opportunities. Hence, the concept of strategic culture that is proposed here is
influence by Bourdieu’s theory of culture as practice19, where strategic culture can be understood in
everyday security practices and amounts to revealed patterns of discourse and action within practices.
The value-added of such an approach is that it stresses the idea of strategic culture as a continuous
19
Peter Jackson, “Pierre Bourdieu, the “cultural turn” and the practice of international history” in Review of
International Studies, 34, (2008), 155-181.
8
process of transformation, the best way to exemplify this idea is by referring to the habitus as a cultural
situation that is constantly subverted by innovatively strategic agents.
To put it bluntly, interests and identities are produced through social practices. What is mostly
interesting is not so much measuring or explaining strategic culture outputs by looking at culture or
interests, but by looking at the concentration of actors, their strategies and the structural underpinning
that made the policy outputs possible in the first place. For this end, the concept of habitus offers an
interesting analytical potential in the examination of actors’ behaviour (neither being substantiated
solely on instrumental rationality nor on ideational, normative-driven reflexivity), serving as an
instrument of human dispositions and constituting (not determining) actors behaviour as it is
manifested in practices.
The concept has been criticized for being too deterministic in explaining human action, but the
fact of the matter is that Bourdieu acknowledges that the habitus functions through dispositions that
guide human action without determining it20. Instead it is a “durably installed generative principle of
regulated improvisation”21. Thus, the actors do not behave or act in a pre-determined way, the habitus
working almost sub-consciously and originally improvising within the existing structures of the field. It
would be safe to assume that security professionals have either traditional or more modern habitus, i.e.
a historically structured and structuring social system of durable and transportable dispositions. But how
do these security actors choose to play out the power game of capitals and hierarchies, and utilise such
dispositions, proves the strategic/manipulative potential of agency in the face of structural constraints?
If Bourdieu starts his analytical endeavour with the structure, it rounds it up in the everyday practice of
free and rationally-capable agents.
Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power22 is particularly useful in bringing within the International
Relations theoretical imaginary the possibility for unequal positional analysis through the relational
dimension between actors and the field with its power structures. Hence, Bourdieu’s theory of praxis in
terms of symbolically mediated interface between the social structures of the fields and the agents’
habitus brings to the fore possible affinities between domination, inequality, and the institutions of the
modern state, such as the military or the police. Hence, the concept of power becomes a central
element for analysing security practices, and such practices’ capacity to reproduce
intersubjective/relational meanings constituting structures and actors alike. The power to reproduce,
dominate, censor the intersubjective reality of a security field means that an actor has access to
material/non-material resources that allows him to employ either discursive power or make strategic
use of material resources. According to Bourdieu, the use of symbolic capital, i.e. honour, status,
expertise, prestige, can account for one of the most crucial sources of power in social hierarchies,
placing privileged actors in a position of authority and legitimacy to speak for/against members of a
field. The holders of the symbolic power can make people see and believe certain visions of the world
rather than others23 in a given regime of representations. Seen through the discursive institutionalist
lenses, the discourse itself is not an effect of the person speaking or an institutional policy setting, but
20
Peter Jackson, “Pierre Bourdieu, the ‘cultural turn’ and the practice of international history” Review of
International Studies 35 (2008).
21
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, 1977, 56.
22
Pierre Bourdieu, 1991.
23
Pierre Bourdieu, 1991.
9
an aftermath or an element of a power struggle over legitimate representations that become embedded
in an institutional structure.
As argued by Bigo, it “is possible to securitize certain problems without speech or discourse and
the military and the police have known this for a long time. The practical work, discipline and expertise
are as important as all forms of discourse”24. Hence, according to Bourdieu, there cannot be a process of
securitisation devoid of a security field constructed by actors, groups or institutions that are authorised
to formulate the definition of security. The concept of field25 or champ can clarify the power dynamics
mentioned above: it was coined for the purpose of identifying the differentiated social milieus and
micro-structures in society, each and every one functioning under the remit of particular rules, patterns,
and forms of authority26. The concept of field can also be defined as “a network, or a configuration of
objective relations between positions”27 that actors occupy in the wider distribution of power relations.
The term signifies a “battlefield” or “playing field” that is a competitive context in which actors confront
each other for more advantageous positions28. In this competitive struggle, actors make use of what
Bourdieu terms capital, “the set of actually usable resources and powers”29, be them economic, cultural,
social, or symbolic.
Thus, this combination of both material and symbolic resources (discursive power) helps to
comprehensively understand the role of security professionals and it is significant in order to understand
the broader processes and power relations within the field of security (re)production. Thus, the security
field becomes a space of power conflict and hence of possibilities and contingency because the
underlying principle is that of struggle30– this clearly denies the unified visions of strategic culture as an
agreed upon, coherent output. Moreover, the field becomes a space of positions but also a space of
position-takings31 (speech acts, policies...). The afore-mentioned arguments help also refute the claims
that a more constructivist IR understanding lacks the potential for a theory of power. The security space
becomes the legroom for power competition between security professionals, the power dynamics itself
constituting and being constitute by the security space in which security professional perform within
different hierarchies and with different material/non-material resources.
The case of Romania’s security and defence field
The transformative post-Cold war context facilitated the military reform in a number of new EU
member states and triggered a complete restructuring of the military sector in Romania, with instances
of hard emulation and isomorphism when adapting to NATO standards (The White Paper of the
24
Didier Bigo, “When Two Become One: Internal and External Securitization in Europe” in Kelstrup, M. And M. C.
Williams, (eds.), International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration: Power, Security and
Community, London: Routledge, 2000, 194.
25
Pierre Bourdieu, Part II “Flaubert and the French Literary Field” in The Field of Cultural Production (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993).
26
Loïc Wacquant, Chapter 16: Pierre Bourdieu, in Rob Stones, (ed.), Key Contemporary Thinkers (London and New
York: Macmillan, New Edition, 2006), 7.
27
Peter Jackson, 2008, 166.
28
Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, 1992, 16-18.
29
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1984), 14.
30
Pierre Bourdieu, 1991.
31
Pierre Bourdieu, 1991.
10
Government: ‘Romanian Armed Forces in 2010 – Reform and Euro-Atlantic Integration, 1999). One
cannot clearly delineate the influence of respectively EU and NATO in their impact upon the new EU
member states’ strategic doctrines. The first conclusion would be to see the NATO’s influence as primary
groundbreaking, since new member states were first accepted in the NATO ‘secure’ family, and only
after entered the EU. The new member states currently participate in both the EU’s institutionalization
in the field of the CSDP and the security cooperation within the NATO structures. This allows them to
contribute to international security beyond their limited capabilities. It however comes tied with
considerable adaptation pressures. Still the analysis needs to be more sensitive to the various channels
of interaction among the relevant actors in such institutional frameworks.
The lack of strong military traditions within the post-communist political setting and the
influence of the NATO in (in)forming their strategic vision make the processes of Europeanization in the
CSDP more fuzzy. The aim is to account for possible institutional tensions created by these two
exogenous influences in the national realm across ministries and agencies over the monopoly on
strategy, framing, policy, and budget. The CSDP framework of cooperation implies deeper
responsibilities from the part of the new EU member states, members of more than purely a military
alliance such a NATO. By adapting to the high operability requirements, Romania and other new EU
member states’ needed to transform their national strategic vision from purely state-based defence
force templates to a more professionalized security framework, with clear emphasis on quality, reduced
numbers, professionalization, flexibility, diversified skills adaptable to civilian missions, rapid reaction
and mobility (The White Paper of the Government: ‘Romanian Armed Forces in 2010 – Reform and EuroAtlantic Integration, 1999). The Romanian security and defence field underwent nearly two decades of
constant and radical reform. By using a longitudinal approach, the paper follows the broad evolutionary
span of the Romanian security and defence field from the early 1990s to present days and the research
makes use of face-to-face, open-ended interviews and observation of young, seasoned, and pensioned
military personnel from lower, middle, and upper hierarchical ranks, as well as civilian personnel within
the Romanian military. For this particular purpose, the paper resorts to interviews so as to account for
possible new trends in the Romanian practice of security making, being indicative of fundamental
changes within the traditional understandings of state-based defence and every-day practice of security
actors.
While the traditional/realist objectives of security making were mostly interested in establishing
armed forces capable to conduct either national or NATO missions on an equal footing with the Western
partners, a new European-centric strategic culture has started to contest the established doxa. A
significant difference is that the CSDP actions are no longer circumscribed to the realm of defence
ministries, but they presuppose complex, multi-level, inter-ministerial, intra-ministerial cooperation with
other fields, such as the ministries of foreign affairs, justice, and finance, not to mention further
cooperation with the EU institutional structures and with other member states. The CSDP efficiency and
operation expectations trigger complex solutions that require at the same time complex governance
structures.
To shed further light on these adaptational dynamics and the levels of inertia or reform
experienced by these countries, the focus should be on their security fields, the relevant policy actors
involved in these fields, and their transformational agency when it comes to competing security
frameworks. Several relevant variables need to be considered when analyzing the nature of the
country’s specific strategic culture: the life style or cultural capital of ‘security’ officials; their symbolic
capital (their honour, authority and prestige); the compatibility between their traditional habituses and
the new security configurations; the level of authority and symbolic capital these actors posses; the level
11
of cross-mobility between the identified national security sub-fields, i.e. military/defence and
civilian/police or the actors upward mobility in terms of their shifting allegiance towards transnational
security fields. Like pieces in a puzzle, such variables do not necessarily pinpoint one specific type of
strategic culture, but they draw the complex picture of security practice.
In the case of new EU member states and their post-Communist, geopolitically-influenced, and
limes-cast status, the hunch to be formulated could spell different scenarios of practices in terms of the
above-mentioned dichotomies or their blurring lines. If the redefinition of the traditional security field,
i.e. internal/policing and external/defence, in Western Europe has be a direct consequence of the
extreme Other’s collapse – the Soviet Union, as well as an aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the
security gamut between internal/external, civilian/military in the case of the EU new member states
could spell out different dynamics of practices and representations. For that end, by looking at the
educational/training background of relevant security professionals in both EU-based and NATO-funded
institutions, their transnationalization (Europeanization and/or NATO-ization) and their career cursus
honorum within both Communist and Post-Communist Realpolitik contexts, the analysis could
substantiate the more Atlanticist-oriented security strategy of new EU member states.
Two major waves of reform took place in Romania: the first one roughly comprising the postCommunist years of general transition and reform, and the second one comprising the pre and post
NATO reforms. In the mid 1990s, the military went though a number of significant and fundamental
changes to the philosophy, organisations and operation of security making. The general transition of the
Romanian military comprised gradual steps that centred on force restructuring, interoperability,
personnel reductions, and modernization. Throughout the 1990s, the resources selected to sustain the
reform of the Romanian armed forces were not enough to cover all costs of the transformation process.
The cause lies in the economic complications generated by Romania’s financial transition that has been
one of the toughest in Central and Eastern Europe. Only by the end of the 1990s and the beginning of
2000, did Romania’s economic recovery allow an increase of investments in the change of its defence
forces. The reform process consisted of both quantitative and qualitative changes in the Romanian
military. From 1989 to 2001, the Armed Forces wartime force structure was reduced from 850,000 to
230,000.Taking into account the budgetary margins, it was impractical to continue the reform by both
restructuring and major acquisition programs and, as a result, equipment modernization was
significantly delayed until 2004. In 2000, a second plan called “Program Force 2003” eliminated the
reserve forces, created rapid reaction components, active and territorial forces, and organized the
integrated surveillance and early warning system. The plan set modernization priorities, derived from
NATO’s interoperability needs, but did not noticeably define mission-structure-capabilities relationship
for the new created forces.
In particular, recruitment and training underwent some radical transformation, changes being
introduced in the educational and physical requirements of the military personnel. The doxa of
Romanian security and defence making over fifty years of Communism was a taken-for-granted “truth”
about what the military should do in a totalitarian regime. It did not require defending because of indepth ideological prerequisites and its dispute was punishable by death. The heroic public image of the
soldier was cultivated or more appropriately said indoctrinated within the socio-political imaginary as
first and foremost defenders of Communist ideological identity against the imperialism of capitalism and
secondly as defenders of the Romanian nation. These demands were then translated into symbolic
capital and criteria for advancing within the ranks. The fall of communism and the waves of national
reforms, coupled by adaptation pressures to become competent members of international
organizations, have presented numerous challenges to the existing doxic knowledge. The introduction of
12
a new skill set of postmodern security practices has constantly pressured the Romanian military to
transform the raw physicality and automatism of the job into more nuanced practices of doing security.
A particularly interesting point was the way in which the new military personnel rationalized
their career choices, from more idealistic and honest justifications like serving their country, prestige or
professionalism to more pragmatic reasons such as a safe and relatively well-paid occupation. The
metamorphosis from a civilian to a military officer involved some major shifts in the habitus in terms of
values and attitudes, the training received being deposited in their mind and bodies, with an acute
understanding of the self other paradigm between the security fields per se and other socio-political
fields. As subjects responded in interviews, one thing became evident: field experience in NATO, EU or
coalition mission was considered as a high marker of prestige and possible rewards, in terms of symbolic
and economic capital. It was made clear during the interviews that the motivation for foreign
deployment was not a result of a newly acquired habitus, namely of new ways of doing security and
their normative motivation, nor an aftermath of understanding the rationality behind the country’s
ambitions and aspirations to catch up other Western European countries in terms of international
projection. Most respondents considered being deployed abroad under the umbrella of international
missions was first and foremost an opportunity to gain substantial pecuniary rewards, and hence it was
a worthy sacrifice for bettering the family’s life conditions.
When given the opportunity to express their views, some respondents were willing to criticize
and distance themselves from certain practices of the Romanian military – provided their anonymity is
preserved, commenting on common public interest themes such as corruption, lack of professionalism,
and technological backwardness. Interviewees that reached the age of pension and were participant in
all three stages of transformation, from the pre-Communist era, the early years of reforms, to the NATO
era, displayed mixed feelings regarding the reform of the Romanian security and defence ethos. On the
one hand, the “more mature in age” traditionalists formulated strong judgements, based on their
habitus, regarding the reform of the security and defence sector, distinguishing between the not so
candid political/civilian oversight of the military’s activities and the real necessities to have up-to-date
technological assets. The unpopular initiatives of political accountability and civilian oversight over a
formerly sovereign security and defence field were viewed with suspicion but also with caution, as the
need to learn the new constraints and risks was important so as to avoid wrong moves and navigate the
field.
The main concern was the development of raw military force, without taking into account the
necessity to develop a new strategic culture defining the core values and priorities of the country. On
the other hand, the reformists were more interested in changing the old status-quo and take privileged
positions within the security and defence “battlefield”. They felt that having been exposed to EuroAtlantic security-making styles is beneficial to them so as to gain more cultural capital (knowledge and
expertise) that will increase their chances to have their voices heard and become policy agenda-setters.
Such interviewees were aware of the constant changing nature of Romania’s strategic culture, and they
considered no longer a breach of loyalty to complain about the state-based, Cold War, old ways of doing
security. The inspirational and ideal model of security and defence practice was of course the NATO
standard. In the end, both traditionalists and reformists were conscious in making alteration in their
habitus in a constant transitional era where an established strategic culture is yet to be negotiated.
Despite an apparent consensus among elites in favour of NATO integration, the processes of
reform, adaptation, and restructuring hid deeper implications of power competition among different
security fields. Interviewed former superior officers in the Romanian Army stated the difficulties of the
13
military reforms during the elimination of mandatory conscription (1st of January 2007) and the NATO
integration period: first, an imbalance between the high number of higher and lower level officers
compared with low numbers of operative soldiers; second, the selection of officers was not necessarily
made through meritocratic processes, because a significant number of officers left ranks through
compensatory monetary incentives or early pensioning; third, the level of adaptability to NATO technical
and operational standards was challenged by the long and burdensome learning process among the
military brass; fourth, emerging tensions between the old military elites and the newly NATO-trained
personnel, due to the fact that the former still maintained high positions within the military hierarchy
and were reluctant to surrender their authority; and fifth, as originally holding the highest position in
terms of trust and credibility in Romanian society, the army lost its privileged position as the nation’s
defender, because the threats have been projected from the borders to foreign theatres of action and
because the press unravelled the doubtful way the military handled its patrimony and contracts.
By applying Bourdieusean theoretical lenses and by focusing mainly in the reform dynamics in
the education, training, and professionalization of military personnel of the Romanian case, the analysis
can prove to be extremely fruitful in terms of pinpointing the NATO-dominated habitus of Romanian
security professionals32. Especially revealing is the first Romanian strategic document that encompassed
the peremptory national objective to rise up to the NATO standards of military professionalization and
capabilities, i.e. The Military Strategy of Romania33. The Military Strategy of Romania is, unquestionably,
an active-defensive strategy, based on four strategic concepts: restructuring and modernization of
military structures, credible defence capabilities, enhanced and more operational partnerships, and
gradual integration within Euro-Atlantic structures. However, among the four concepts the reform and
modernization of the military structures ranks the highest and subordinates the other three strategic
priorities.
The principal method stated in the Military Strategy to achieve such goals is through educational
and training programs for officers in accordance with NATO standards, procedures, at both tactical and
joint levels, pertaining to the NATO/PfP Regional Training Centres. Special attention is given to
dispatching as many officers as possible to attend NATO colleges in NATO member countries for the
professionalization of Romania’s defensive force. Hence, the NATO emulative instances are manifested
in practices, training backgrounds, and institutional frameworks, with commands and forces composed
of carefully designed NATO structures – highly effective, efficient, flexible, and most crucially compatible
with NATO benchmarks and interoperable with NATO armed forces. Nevertheless, such reform
processes organized under the remit of civilian political leadership, have naturally encountered
elements of resistance34 on the military side, resisting reforms. Such reforms determined the military
32
Lieutenant Colonel Nicolae-Stefan Z. Ciocoiu, Romanian Army, “Romanian Armed Forces Transformation Process
– The Core Issue Of The National Military Strategy Towards NATO Integration”, U.S. Army Wat College (USAWC)
Strategy Research Project, May 2004.
33
The Military Strategy of Romania (2000) is “is the basic document of the Armed Forces, describing the
fundamental objectives and options for carrying out, by military means and actions, the defence policy of the
Romanian state. It stipulates the place and role of the Romanian Armed Forces within the efforts for achieving the
objectives included in the National Security Strategy and in the Defence White Book of the Government on
national security and defence. The Military Strategy represents the basic document, which serves as a guide to the
activity of the Romanian Armed Forces in the first years of the next century.”
http://english.mapn.ro/milstrategy/foreword.php4/21/2005, (accessed on March 1, 2010).
34
Dimitris Keridis, and Charles M. Perry, Defence Reform, Modernization, and Military Cooperation In Souteastern
Europe (Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis), Potomac Books Inc. (2004), 95-95.
14
brass to undergo drastic reductions of departments and personnel, as well as a restructuring of
hierarchies. Hence, despite an apparent consensus among elites in favour of NATO integration, the
processes of reform, adaptation, and restructuring hide deeper consequences for power competition
among different security fields.
Nevertheless, the defence policy of Romania is not elaborated by the Romanian Ministry of
Defence per se, being actually formulated by the Department of Policy of Defence and Planning35: the
department represents a central structure of the Ministry of Defence that coordinates and oversees the
accomplishment of all duties and obligations pertaining to Romania’s membership in NATO and the
European Union, it is responsible for the application of the integrated defence and planning policy, and
last but not the least, it guarantees the coordinated cooperation of Romania with international political
and military structures. According to the responsibilities of the Department, the primary objective of
Romania’s defence policy is to ensure the military defence of the country, by accomplishing two
interdependent tasks: assuring the cohesion of military and security reforms with the necessary funds
for the promotion of governmental and military objectives; and the development of international
military cooperation, by actively participating in political-military initiatives for peace-maintaining
operations.
The Department’s chief task is to coordinate the Ministry’s activities in line with the latest
changes in the international security context, being the key strategic planning milieu that is generative
of innovation and reform. Interviewed personnel from the Department have highlighted several general
undercurrents going on Romanian security reform trends during the transitional years after
Communism. An interesting empirical focus that came out of the interviews was constituted by the
blurring the analytical lines between military/civilian and internal/external security nexuses and how
they inform changes within the national strategic cultures of new EU member states after processes of
Brussels-ization or NATO-ization or both. This point was counterintuitive to the usual mantra of a NATOdominated habitus, allowing for deviations from the Atlanticist orientation of Romania’s foreign policy.
The majority of interviewees demonstrated a sophisticated level of reflexivity regarding the abovementioned supposed socialization rivalries between the EU and NATO and admitted that security and
defence is no longer a locus of military operations, but a more complex technocratic process.
Interviewees have pointed out that Romania, as a European Union member state, takes an
active part in contributing to the consolidation of an area of freedom, security and justice, meaning the
necessity to harmonize its legislation, practices and institutions in matters relates to justice and internal
affairs. Especially because Romania has the most eastern European Union boundary under its tutelage,
there is a need for an efficient management of the eastern limes against the threats of illegal
immigration, the traffic of human beings, organized crime, terrorist threats, and transnational
criminality in general. Interviewees states that the expertise of specialist dealing for internal affairs
issues needed to be coordinated with external and security affairs personnel so as to provide the
relevant intelligence to assure an efficient management of the boundary. The official discourse delivered
by the Department’s representatives is that the system of linkage officers in the European Union reflects
Romania’s concern with a steady and enduring dialogue with EU partners, in the view of developing of
some optimum reaction capacities towards the political and economical progress and the operative
requirements in the European Union security field.
35
Department of Policy of Defence and Planning, The
http://english.mapn.ro/organization/ (accessed on March 1, 2010).
15
Romanian
Ministry
of
Defence,
Hence, a Bourdieusian inspired research design lends weight to the interplay between the
expertises acquired by security professionals in different educational/training contexts and how they are
acted upon within national security fields. The application of specific forms of know-how or what
Bourdieu refers to as habitus, could set up potential hierarchies between legitimate skills and expertise,
and could also generate strong competitive relations between specific actors and groups that make up
the broader spectrum of the security field. This is precisely why the Bourdieusean concept of field, seen
as a battlefield of vested institutional interests, can be extremely helpful in mapping out the potential
for overlapping, synergy, competition, conflict or hierarchy between internal security and external
security sub-fields.
Especially in the realms of security and foreign policy making, the security and political fields are
populated with high ranking officials that embody authoritative descriptors, translated in their high
political and military positions and the high politics nature of their daily practice. How such actors
manage to (re)convert their expertise and translated their capitals across specialized security fields may
be an indicator of the security fields’ cross-fertilization, transformation, or even trans-territorialisation.
Moreover, by questioning the emergence of a transnational, distinct security field in the national
context of new EU member states, the research can trace back the elite competition for symbolic power
and representation, as well as the turf monopoly over security practices and threat formulations.
Therefore, the research should be focused not only on the actors’ strategic manipulation of
policy windows of opportunities or the use of the capital, but also on the ways in which they monopolise
and reproduce these opportunities by establishing closed networks and by practicing exclusionary
tactics. Where flourishing transnational security action takes place, it reflects the potential of free
spaces within the field of national security structures, opened up by ESDP or NATO prospects for
innovation, change, and reform. From this point of view, a Bourdieusean research agenda is fruitful so as
to understand the way in which the impact of Europeanization and NATO-ization on national strategic
culture is framed within discourse and the degree to which the security continuum between internal and
external security is reflected in everyday practice. The analytical stakes thus run even deeper to the
potential scrutiny of the role of the state, governance, territoriality, the monopoly over control and
sovereignty, as well as the possibility for the state to enter in retreat within the field of security.
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