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This book examines the dynamics of intelligence practices in the Scandinavian culture of high social cohesion and high trust. Situated within the new body of scholarly literature, the book emphasizes critical empirical investigations of intelligence practices, highlighting the specific cultural settings of such practices. By providing Scandinavian perspectives on intelligence studies, the work distinguishes Scandinavian intelligence studies from the predominant Anglo-American perspectives. Throughout the Western world, the past two decades have generated a rapid expansion of the legal mandate, funding, and capabilities of intelligence agencies which, simultaneously, have been pushed to renegotiate and renew their legitimacy and democratic mandate in response to a recurrent pattern of scandals, leaks, and failures. While these tendencies are also evident in Scandinavia, the book argues that it is important to emphasize the unique context of cohesion and trust in state agencies that differentiates Scandinavian welfare states from the American (and to a lesser extent British) contexts. This book brings together scholars from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark to address the continuous renegotiation of the legitimacy of state intelligence as it plays out in a Scandinavian setting. This book will be of interest to students of intelligence studies, Nordic politics, security studies, and International Relations.

Throughout history, military officers' standing in society has been maintained through the establishment and reforming of military academies. Gradually infusing officer education with academic standards and scholarly ideals has helped secure the corps' status as a legitimate profession. Drawing on Norbert Elias and Pierre Bourdieu, this article explores the "academization" of officer education in Sweden over 200 years. It finds that academization processes have been prominent in the military officer field, first, during 19th-century struggles to establish a state-organized educational system and war science discipline for the emerging profession, and second, during post-Cold War struggles to reinstate the military's legitimacy and status by integrating officer education in the university sector. It argues that academic capital has been drawn on instrumentally in the officer field, as a means to endow the corps with a wider credibility and, more broadly, justify the existence of violent professions in peaceful societies.

What is at stake when citizens are encouraged to deploy vigilant surveillance and report what they consider to be unusual and "suspicious" activity? This article explores the current role of vigilance in contemporary Western security practices aimed at battling terrorist acts and major crime. It does so by critically analysing official constructions of suspiciousness, the responsibilisation process of participatory policing, and the assignments of prejudiced amateur detectives. It concludes, firstly, that the agency offered by political campaigns such as "If You See Something, Say Something" is highly illusive since the act of reporting simply demarcates where participation ends, and where fear and paranoia are turned into legitimate intelligence, enabling the state to exercise authoritative action and preemptive violence. Secondly, these kinds of vigilance initiatives also nurture a normalisation of suspicion towards strangers since the encouragements to be aware of anything-and-anyone deemed "out of the ordinary", as well as the tools for reporting such suspicions, increasingly creep into the mundane realms of everyday life.

"This book compares and contrasts publicly espoused security concepts in the Nordic region, and explores the notion of societal security. Outside observers often assume that Nordic countries take similar approaches to the security and safety of their citizens. This book challenges that assumption and traces the evolution of 'societal security', and its broadly equivalent concepts, in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. The notion of societal security is deconstructed and analysed in terms of its different meanings and implications for each country, through both country- and issue-focused studies. Each chapter traces the evolution of key security concepts and related practices, allowing for a comparison of similarities and differences between these four countries. Using discourses and practices as evidence, this is the first book to explore how different Nordic nations have conceptualised domestic security over time. The findings will be valuable to scholars from across the geographical and theoretical spectrum, while highlighting how Nordic security discourses and practices may deviate from traditional assumptions about Nordic values. This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, Nordic politics and International Relations"--

"This book compares and contrasts publicly espoused security concepts in the Nordic region, and explores the notion of societal security.
Outside observers often assume that Nordic countries take similar approaches to the security and safety of their citizens. This book challenges that assumption and traces the evolution of 'societal security', and its broadly equivalent concepts, in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. The notion of societal security is deconstructed and analysed in terms of its different meanings and implications for each country, through both country- and issue-focused studies. Each chapter traces the evolution of key security concepts and related practices, allowing for a comparison of similarities and differences between these four countries. Using discourses and practices as evidence, this is the first book to explore how different Nordic nations have conceptualised domestic security over time. The findings will be valuable to scholars from across the geographical and theoretical spectrum, while highlighting how Nordic security discourses and practices may deviate from traditional assumptions about Nordic values.
This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, Nordic politics and International Relations."

This introductory chapter establishes the importance of exploring the various ways that security has been conceptualised and acted upon in the Nordic region, with the goal to identify patterns of convergence and divergence. It reviews the ostensibly Nordic concept of 'societal security' and explains why some outside observers may assume commonalities amongst Nordic ways of thinking broadly about, and doing, security. One is the tendency to view Nordic security concepts as linked to the robust nature of the region's social welfare systems, while another is the seemingly orchestrated way in which non-military forms of Nordic security developed after the Cold War. While these factors are certainly relevant, the chapter also charts likely lines of divergence to be investigated by the chapters in this volume. It notes varying interpretations and translations of the societal security concept, different perceptions of the threat environment, and heterogeneity in the way Nordic countries committed to international institutions and military alliances. The chapter then sketches the analytical framework of the book and introduces the contributions. ; NordSTEVA

This book offers a new research agenda for intelligence studies in contemporary times. In contrast to Intelligence Studies (IS), whose aim has largely been to improve the performance of national security services and assist policy making, this book takes the investigation of the new professionals and everyday practices of intelligence as the immediate point of departure. Starting from the observation that intelligence today is increasingly about counterterrorism, crime control, surveillance, and other security-related issues, this book adopts a transdisciplinary approach for studying the shifting logics of intelligence, how it has come to involve an expanding number of empirical sites such as the police organisation, local community, prison, and the Internet, as well as well a corresponding multiplicity of new actors in these domains. Shifting the focus away from traditional spies and Anglo-American intelligence services, this book addresses the transformations of contemporary intelligence through empirically detailed and theoretically innovative analyses, making a key contribution to existing scholarship. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, critical security studies, foreign policy and International Relations.

"This book offers a new research agenda for intelligence studies in contemporary times. In contrast to Intelligence Studies (IS), whose aim has largely been to improve the performance of national security services and assist policy making, this book takes the investigation of the new professionals and everyday practices of intelligence as the immediate point of departure. Starting from the observation that intelligence today is increasingly about counterterrorism, crime control, surveillance, and other security-related issues, this book adopts a transdisciplinary approach for studying the shifting logics of intelligence, how it has come to involve an expanding number of empirical sites such as the police organisation, local community, prison, and the Internet, as well as well a corresponding multiplicity of new actors in these domains. Shifting the focus away from traditional spies and Anglo-American intelligence services, this book addresses the transformations of contemporary intelligence through empirically detailed and theoretically innovative analyses, making a key contribution to existing scholarship. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, critical security studies, foreign policy and International Relations"--

Contemporary research on so-called Nordic branding has provided crucial insights into the social power of states and how various actors use and circulate 'progressive' nation brand tropes for political and commercial goals. Hitherto, the literature on Nordic branding has focused on a wide range of substantive issues, among other things, human rights, gender equality, social welfare and foreign aid, but considerably less attention has been paid to the topic of security. The present article adds to a small but established literature on how the security sphere is increasingly entangled with nation branding. In the Nordic region, we argue, the latter is particularly evident in the case of Sweden – one of the world's largest per-capita arms exporters in the post-Cold War era but also a country known and often revered for its peaceful and progressive image. Focusing on the case of Sweden, the article contributes to knowledge of how defence industry-related actors (both public and private) draw on and frame nation branding tropes to sell and legitimise their products and services to both insiders (domestic constituents) and outsiders (the global security market).

Contemporary research on so-called Nordic branding has provided crucial insights into the social power of states and how various actors use and circulate 'progressive' nation brand tropes for political and commercial goals. Hitherto, the literature on Nordic branding has focused on a wide range of substantive issues, among other things, human rights, gender equality, social welfare and foreign aid, but considerably less attention has been paid to the topic of security. The present article adds to a small but established literature on how the security sphere is increasingly entangled with nation branding. In the Nordic region, we argue, the latter is particularly evident in the case of Sweden – one of the world's largest per-capita arms exporters in the post-Cold War era but also a country known and often revered for its peaceful and progressive image. Focusing on the case of Sweden, the article contributes to knowledge of how defence industry-related actors (both public and private) draw on and frame nation branding tropes to sell and legitimise their products and services to both insiders (domestic constituents) and outsiders (the global security market).

This collective discussion proposes a novel understanding of intelligence as a social phenomenon, taking place in a social space that increasingly involves actors and professional fields not immediately seen as part of intelligence. This discussion is a response to the inherent functionalism in Intelligence Studies (IS) that conceives of intelligence as a cycle serving policymakers. Instead, our interventions seek to problematize and break with this notion of the cycle and show what an alternative study of intelligence would look like. In the first part of the discussion, we situate our intervention in the broader fields of IS and International Political Sociology. Espousing a transdisciplinary approach, we build our four interventions as transversal lines cutting through a social space in which agents with differing stakes participate and reframe the meaning and practice of intelligence. Intelligence professionals not only have to reckon with policymakers, but also increasingly with law enforcement agents, representatives from the science and technology sector, judges, lawyers, activists, and Internet users themselves. Each move takes a step further away from the intelligence cycle by introducing new empirical sites, actors, and stakes.