Interactionist role theory meets ontological security studies: an exploration of synergies between socio-psychological approaches to the study of international relations

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 851-874 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Klose
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Role Theory ◽  
Role Play ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
Societal Role

This article argues that interactionist role theory holds much potential for complementing the ontological security literature in the field of International Relations. Concretely, the article argues that an interactionist role theory perspective promises to supplement the ontological security literature in at least two significant respects. First, it allows for a better understanding of how an international actor’s (capacity to provide) ontological security is tied to its ability to realize its ‘self’ in society through the making and playing of roles (and the subsequent casting of others). Second, it emphasizes how reflective intelligence enables an international actor to address destabilizing disconnects between its ‘self’-image and societal role-play, and to develop a measure of ontological resilience (a capacity to constructively engage with – and to recover from – ontological security challenges). To illustrate this argument, the article provides a case study, which explores, from an interactionist role theory perspective, how the European Union’s ontological security has been strengthened, challenged and restored in its interaction with its Southern and Eastern Neighbourhood.

Ontological Insecurity as an Emergent Phenomenon

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filip Ejdus ◽  
Tijana Rečević
Keyword(s):  
Tipping Point ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Open Door Policy ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Emergent Phenomenon ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Level Of Analysis ◽  
European Migration

Abstract. One of the central debates in Ontological Security Studies (OSS) has been about the level-of-analysis. While some authors focus on individuals, others have scaled up the concept and applied it to collectives such as states as the main ontological security seekers. In this article, we contribute to the level-of-analysis debate in OSS by providing a novel argument in defense of scaling up. By drawing on the literatures on complexity and securitization, we conceptualize ontological security as an emergent phenomenon. It arises from the ground-up and is driven by feedback loops in a non-linear and spontaneous fashion from horizontal micro-interactions and securitizations from below, ultimately reaching a tipping point. We illustrate this argument in a case study of anti-immigrant mobilization in Serbia since the outbreak of the European migration crisis (2015–2020). At the outset of the crisis, state officials interpreted the migration crisis as a manageable and temporary situation, adopted an “open door” policy and even banned far-right extremist demonstrations against migration. Over time, however, ontological insecurity over the migrant threat has gradually emerged from the bottom-up through a cascade of rumors, connective action, and everyday securitizing acts. While it might be too early to conclude that the national tipping point has been reached, this case study clearly shows why ontological insecurity merits to be studied as an emergent phenomenon.

Returning to the roots of ontological security: insights from the existentialist anxiety literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 875-895
Author(s):  
Karl Gustafsson ◽  
Nina C. Krickel-Choi
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Anthony Giddens ◽  
Key Concepts

Research on ontological security in International Relations (IR) has grown significantly in recent years. However, this scholarship is marked by conceptual ambiguity concerning the meaning of and relationship between the key concepts of ontological insecurity and anxiety. In addition, ontological security scholarship has been criticized for applying a concept that was originally developed for understanding individuals to states, and for being excessively concerned with continuity while largely ignoring change or seeing it as a negative force to be avoided. Despite such issues, however, reflection on the theoretical origins of ontological security remains limited. Based on such reflection, the present article argues that these issues can be circumvented if we return to one of the theoretical precursors of ontological security studies, the existentialist literature on anxiety. R.D. Laing, who coined the term ontological security, was strongly influenced by the existentialist anxiety theorists. Anthony Giddens, however, who drew on Laing and whose understanding of ontological security permeates IR scholarship, explicitly rejected the distinction between normal and neurotic anxiety, which was central to the work of existentialists like Rollo May. This article reintroduces this distinction. Doing so is useful, the article argues, both for providing conceptual clarity and for moving beyond the criticisms of ontological security mentioned above. More generally, the article suggests that ontological security studies has much to gain from drawing on the insights of the existentialist literature on anxiety to a greater extent than has hitherto been the case.

Separatists, state subjectivity, and fundamental ontological (in)security in international relations

2021 ◽  
pp. 004711782110456
Author(s):  
Janis Grzybowski
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Security Dilemma ◽  
Starting Point

Ontological security studies (OSS) in International Relations (IR) emphasize the role of identity, anxiety, and a sense of self in world politics. Yet suggesting that states act in certain ways because of ‘who they are’ also assumes that they are in fact states. In this article, I problematize the presupposition of state subjects in the context of separatist conflicts in which claims to statehood compete and overlap. Where unrecognized de facto states are pitted against their unyielding parent states, the two threaten each other’s very state personhood, thereby presenting a more radical challenge to their existence than traditional ‘physical’ and ‘ontological’ security threats. Separatist conflicts thus reveal a widely overlooked dimension of fundamental ontological security, provided by the constitution and recognition of states as such. Moreover, because of the exclusiveness of state subjects in the modern international order, any third parties attempting to resolve such conflicts inevitably face a meta-security dilemma whereby reassuring one side by confirming its claim to statehood simultaneously renders the other side radically insecure. Thus, rather than regarding particular state subjects as merely the starting point of quests for ontological security in international relations, they should also be understood as already their result.

The Forgotten Lives: Connecting Gender, Security, and Everyday Livelihoods in Ukraine's Conflict

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Mila O'Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Security Analysis ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
Military Security ◽  
Economic Austerity ◽  
First Time ◽  
Empirical Contribution

Recent debates within Women, Peace and Security (WPS) scholarship (e.g., Bergeron, Cohn, and Duncanson 2017; Elias 2015; True 2015) have underlined the need to position the WPS agenda in the context of broader feminist security analysis as defined by early feminist international relations scholars (e.g., Tickner 1992). More precisely, this requires integrating feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist political economy (FPE). At the center of these largely theoretical reflections is a concern that gender-responsive peace-building efforts have too often been undermined by postwar neoliberal economic processes. This essay provides an empirical contribution to this debate, taking the case study of Ukraine as an atypical example of how WPS has been adopted and implemented for the first time during an active conflict. The integration of FPE and FSS proves especially relevant for a country in conflict, where economic austerity policies come along with increased military expenditure. The essay illustrates that the bridging of security and economy is entirely absent in Ukraine's WPS agenda, which has largely prioritized military security while failing to connect it to the austerity policies and the gendered structural inequalities deepened by the ongoing conflict.

"This is not a cyber war, it's a...?"

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barnard-Wills
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Denial Of Service ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Theory Analysis ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
Cyber War ◽  
Cyber Conflict

This paper is a political theory analysis using the conflict, attacks, and ‘hactivism’ surrounding the WikiLeaks organisations following diplomatic cable releases as a case study to demonstrate the complexity of contemporary cyber conflict. This complexity is reflected in the motivations, identities, and values of a multiplicity of (often non-state) actors. Termed ‘the first visible cyber war’ this conflict (having already drawn in states, media organisations, banks and payments companies, and loose coalitions of individuals) is one where traditional metaphors of war occlude as much as they reveal. International relations and critical security studies have developed a range of approaches to international conflict that focus on identities, values, and normative frameworks. Securitization, hegemony, and democratic demands offer a productive way of understanding cyber conflict. Distributed denial of service attacks are interpreted as an attempt to establish a dominant discursive position and to construct a coalition around political issues

Postcolonial challenges to migration control: French–Moroccan cooperation practices on forced returns

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 242-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora El Qadim
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Statistical Evaluation ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Good Strategy ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
Migration Control ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Do So

Analyses that develop a postcolonial critique of international relations and security studies have outlined the project of ‘decolonizing’ these disciplines and have underlined the importance of taking into account actors from the South. I seek to do so here through the study of migration policies, in particular by looking for the agency of state actors in so-called countries of origin. This article shows that the study of practices of cooperation is a good strategy for decolonizing the study of international relations. Based upon the example of mid-level cooperation on deportation between France and Morocco, this article focuses on two devices and the practices used for international cooperation on migration controls: the posting of immigration liaison officers and the statistical evaluation of cooperation. This case study shows that such practices open brokering spaces in the transnational security field and allow state actors from the South to challenge the dominance of the North.

scholarly journals Truth and consequences? Reconceptualizing the politics of exposure

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (6) ◽  
pp. 597-613
Author(s):  
Lisa Stampnitzky
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Significant Process ◽  
New Framework

Secrecy, especially state secrecy, has taken on increasing interest for scholars of international relations and security studies. However, even with interest in secrecy on the rise, there has been little explicit attention paid to exposure. The breaking of secrecy has generally been relegated to the role of a mere ‘switch’, whose internal workings and variations are of little consequence. This article argues that exposure is a significant process in its own right, and introduces a new conceptualization of exposure as a socially and politically constructed process, one that must be ‘thickly described’ if we are to understand how it occurs and has effects. I differentiate the process of exposure into two distinct aspects, reserving the concept of exposure to refer to releases of information, while introducing the concept of revelation to refer to a collective recognition that something has been exposed. The first part of the article explores existing understandings of secrecy and exposure to demonstrate why a new framework is needed, while the second part applies this framework to a case study of the exposure of the use of torture in the post-9/11 US ‘war on terror’.

The gamification in Diplomacy studies as an effective tool in knowledge transfer. Case study: simulating a diplomatic organisation (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cercel Mihai
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Transfer ◽  
Experiential Learning ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Role Play ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Anonymous Questionnaire ◽  
Transfer Case

UNSTRUCTURED The paper contributes to understanding how innovations in International Relations role play learning are critical for building competencies to students. Modern diplomacy challenges require a bunch of competencies that have to be developed even before joining the diplomatic service. The research explores the interactions between real policy, diplomacy and international relations and students’ capabilities. The paper proposes a role play game developed by the author to simulate a part of the activities of a typical Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Is transferable the knowledge through role play simulations in terms of competencies enhancement? The data was collected between 2016 and 2020, using a voluntary, anonymous questionnaire and focus groups discussions. Data shows that the experiential learning is able to form or to enhance a series of competencies in International Relations and Diplomacy field. Implications are discussed for enhancing the learning process in International Relations and Diplomacy master programs.

scholarly journals A Gender Approach to Militancy (Extremism) in Pakistan –A Case Study of North-Western Region

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-178
Author(s):  
Shahid Dilawar ◽  
Asghar Khan ◽  
Muhammad Nawaz Khan Jadoon
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Female Population ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
The Social ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Security Agent ◽  
North Western

The agenda of gender and security in the debate of international relations has much to achieve yet. The notion is based on normative differences of feminism and realism. The former is a flag bearer of feminist agenda of political studies and the latter is a leading International Relations paradigm. There have been many case studies and accounts in which women as victims of conflicts are studied and their plights are analyzed, however, the role of women as ‘security agent’ had hardly been previously touched. The gender inequality worsens the situation in Pakistani society as it promotes radical/extremist tendency which subsequently poses immense security challenges to the social fabric. Due to lack of research on this particular issue, the study has been opted for further exploration. Pakistan being at the forefront in the war against terror since its onset in 2001, has predominantly a military based security agenda. However, the country with 52% of female population, makes it an appropriate case study to understand security and gender. This paper pertains to some conflict hit areas of Pakistan where women role has been analyzed as security agent. This paper is an attempt to explore and analyses the theoretical and academic debate of gender and security with particular reference to North-Western Pakistan.

scholarly journals Fit for purpose? Fitting ontological security studies ‘into’ the discipline of International Relations: Towards a vernacular turn

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Croft ◽  
Nick Vaughan-Williams
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mutual Interest ◽  
Fit For Purpose

The performance of International Relations (IR) scholarship – as in all scholarship – acts to close and police the boundaries of the discipline in ways that reflect power–knowledge relations. This has led to the development of two strands of work in ontological security studies in IR, which divide on questions of ontological choice and the nature of the deployment of the concept of dread. Neither strand is intellectually superior to the other and both are internally heterogeneous. That there are two strands, however, is the product of the performance of IR scholarship, and the two strands themselves perform distinct roles. One allows ontological security studies to engage with the ‘mainstream’ in IR; the other allows ‘international’ elements of ontological security to engage with the social sciences more generally. Ironically, both can be read as symptoms of the discipline’s issues with its own ontological (in)security. We reflect on these intellectual dynamics and their implications and prompt a new departure by connecting ontological security studies in IR with the emerging interdisciplinary fields of the ‘vernacular’ and ‘everyday’ via the mutual interest in biographical narratives of the self and the work that they do politically.

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