Historical Narratives and the Defense of Stigmatized Industries

This study examines how managers and entrepreneurs in stigmatized industries use historical narratives to combat stigma. We examine two industries, the private military contractors (PMC) industry in the United States and the cannabis industry in Canada. In recent decades, the representatives of these industries have worked to reduce the level of stigmatization faced by the industries. We show that historical narratives were used rhetorically by the representatives of both industries. In both cases, these historical narratives were targeted at just one subset of the population. Our research contributes to debates about stigmatization in ideologically diverse societies, an important issue that have been overlooked by the existing literature on stigmatized industries, which tends to assume the existence of homogeneous audiences when researching the efforts of industry representatives to destigmatize their industries.

‘We don’t do that’: A constructivist perspective on the use and non-use of private military contractors by Denmark

In this article I put forward a social constructivist perspective on state use of Private Military and Security Contractors (PMSCs). I will argue that state outsourcing decisions are, to a large extent, shaped by nationally shared values, understandings and dispositions. Concretely, I first provide a detailed overview of the extent of domestic and deployed contracting by the Danish Defence and, thereafter, based on a number of semi-structured interviews, I expose the dominant understandings that shaped how PMSCs have come to be understood in Denmark. By so doing I can show that the employment of PMSCs by the Danish Defence remains comparatively limited because it is largely perceived as inappropriate and as incompatible with what it means to be ‘Danish’. Although Denmark too has to balance its international engagements with the limited resources allocated to defence (the typical functional pressures) Danish particular ‘soft’ neoliberalism and ‘hard’ commitments to IHL speak against using private actors to make that possible. This means I take in the more abstract, macro-level discussions on the end of the Cold War and the advent of neoliberalism but go beyond by asking whether, and if so how, these and other collective experiences and understandings actually (co-)shape(d) outsourcing decisions.

Mercenaries as a political Tool of World Powers in the Congo Сrisis of 1960–1967

The period of national liberation movements was marked by a struggle for political influence between world powers in the rich newly independent countries. The Congo crisis was the first to witness such an intense use of mercenaries by world powers in modern history. Policies differed – several western countries hired mercenaries to help suppress secessionist insurgencies, while others used them to support the secession of some regions in the Congo (now – Democratic Republic of Congo). Mercenaries were used to suppress Simba rebellion, to help in release of hostages, as well as in training the Congolese National Army. There was much to gain from the use of mercenary forces by the former colonizing nations. While formally they set the colonies free, informally they continued influencing politics in these countries using clandestine forces – the phenomenon which later becomes known as an essential component of “neocolonialism”. The use of numerous “soldiers of fortune” in the Congo will launch a process of corporate mercenarism, leading to the participation of mercenaries and private military contractors in a higher number of conflicts. In a short period of time contractors will become an integral part of military missions worldwide.