The military is an institution with a very distinctive relationship to risks. The military organizes the use of force in order to defend the interests of a state or government. Soldiers are working in dangerous environments and with dangerous materials. Soldiers are supposed to be “brave”, which means to be prepared to take risks and to even risk their life in order to carry out their duty within the armed forces.
On the other hand, the military is an organization that has to reduce its vulnerability. For centuries, even in times of warfare, soldiers were more at risk to die from infectious diseases and from accidents than from battle action. In the last couple of years, the multiplication of military interventions has provoked public debates about fatal mishaps and mistakes killing soldiers as well as civilians and destroying material. Such “side effects” are supposed to be avoided, material and soldiers are supposed to be reliable and not be killed or destroyed easily or by chance.
In the conference on ‘risks and the military’ we want to discuss, from a historical perspective, the changing perception of risk taking and risk avoiding and ways to deal with it in the military during the 20th century. We are, for instance, interested in the following questions:
Acceptability of risks: Which kind of risks are perceived as acceptable, which kind of risks are perceived as avoidable in the military? How does this perception change over the 20th century? Did different actors perceive risks in a different way? How did for example military elites, ordinary soldiers, the public or government perceive risks?
Experiences of risk: How are different kinds of risks experienced in peace and during war? Are different kinds of risks and force experienced in a different way, for example violence in battle action and death by accidents or infections?
Practices: How to deal with specified risks? What have different institutions done to avoid or to reduce specified risks within the military?
Technology: What was the role of new technologies in leading to new risks? Are there special ways of dealing with new technological risks? How is the increasingly complex nature of military technology addressed?
Error cultures /learning process: Is there an evolution in the perception of errors that can lead to accidental destruction or death over the 20th century? Which role does the military and its institutions play for learning processes concerning risks and risk management in the 20th century in general, i.e. even outside the military? Does the public perception of individual and structural errors change during the 20th century?
Transfer of ideas, technologies and practices: How are debates about risk and risk management in the military are related to debates within the rest of society? Does the military exert concrete or abstract influence on risk conceptions in the wider society? Are there, on the other hand, specific constellations of risks that are valued differently in the military?
Concepts of regulation and citizenship: Risk perception and risk management are often closely connected to concepts of and debates about citizenship and regulation. How are the discussions about risks informed by ideas of the relationship between the state and its citizens? How do they influence regulation of risks?
The workshop takes place in the context of a USIAS-FRIAS joint research project on military accidents in France and Germany in the twentieth century. We are therefore especially interested in proposals that deal with German and French history. Relevant topics for the workshop could come from the realm of the histories of military, security, technology, or of medicine. We are interested both in presentations of case studies as well as in more conceptual approaches on the topic. Please send your proposals (in French, English or German) including a short abstract of approximately 200 words for the workshop and brief biographical details (affiliation, main areas of research and relevant publications) until March 25 2017 to the following addresses:

Anne Rasmussen : anne.rasmussen@unistra.fr
Birgit Metzger: birgit.metzger@mail.uni-freiburg.de
Peter Itzen: peter.itzen@geschichte.uni-freiburg.de

Proposals will be reviewed by the project’s organizing committee, and selected contributors will be notified in April 2017.