The drones of others: an insight into imagination of UAVs in Germany

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have come to be a central military technology in the current era and have also recently entered the civil sector. Like any technology, UAVs are not just a technical object with distinct technical qualities but also the product of social negotiations and imaginations in public discourses. This article takes the word drone as a distinct component of these negotiations and imaginations of UAVs. With an interest in the German imagination of UAVs, the article presents an analysis of what is captured in the word Drohne (drone) in a corpus generated from an established German news platform. This analysis provides insight into the meanings attached to the word Drohne, such as ‘military power’, ‘hyper-progress’ and ‘threat to extant technology’. Importantly, it uncovers the distinction between two kinds of ‘Drohnen’: actors and tool, and unveils a geography of ‘Drohne’, in and through which ‘Drohnen’ are ‘managed’. With that the analysis reveals an intriguing subtle theme in the social negotiation of UAVs in Germany. In this theme the technology ‘Drohne’ (drone) is imagined as potentially ‘game changing’ in nature. At the same time, it is symbolically ‘tamed’ and organised through a (modern) understanding of bordered social ‘containers’, in which ‘Drohnen’ are imagined to exist and are subject to ‘compartmentalised’ responsibilities

The paths not (yet) taken: Ulrich Beck, the ‘cosmopolitized world’ and security studies

While it is Ulrich Beck’s concept of ‘risk society’ that has mostly attracted attention in the field of security studies, in this article I argue that if we want to take Beck seriously, we need to go beyond his ‘risk society’ thesis and acknowledge that his main thesis was that we live in a social reality that is qualitatively new and, consequently, calls for a radical shift in how we look at and talk about it. To bring Beck into security studies, then, means to study ‘security’ from within Beck’s ‘new world’. For that, I argue, a sharper conception of what characterizes that world is needed. At the heart of my article I provide such a conception – the ‘cosmopolitized world’ – which I identify as being shaped by non-linearity and the interplay of two moments: the ‘cosmopolitized reality’ and the ‘tradition of the national perspective’. Building on this concept and experimenting with it, I turn to reading the ‘US national security’ discourse as this is constructed in the text of the 2015 National Security Strategy from within this ‘cosmopolitized world’. Reflecting on this experiment, I conclude by highlighting the potential that bringing Beck in this way into security studies holds, as well as pointing to the need for future work on the vocabulary of the ‘cosmopolitized world’

Negotiations of the "New World"

Global is everywhere - recent years have seen a significant proliferation of the adjective "global" across discourses. But what do social actors actually do when using this term? Written from within the political studies and International Relations disciplines, and with a particular interest in the US, this book demonstrates that the widespread use of "global" is more than a linguistic curiosity. It constitutes a distinct political phenomenon of major importance: the negotiation and reproduction of the "new world". As such, the analysis of the use of "global" provides fascinating insights into an influential and politically loaded aspect of contemporary imaginations of the world

Negotiations of the "New World"

Global is everywhere - recent years have seen a significant proliferation of the adjective "global" across discourses. But what do social actors actually do when using this term? Written from within the political studies and International Relations disciplines, and with a particular interest in the US, this book demonstrates that the widespread use of "global" is more than a linguistic curiosity. It constitutes a distinct political phenomenon of major importance: the negotiation and reproduction of the "new world". As such, the analysis of the use of "global" provides fascinating insights into an influential and politically loaded aspect of contemporary imaginations of the world

From military to ‘security interventions’: an alternative approach to contemporary interventions

In both academic and policy circles international interventions tend to mean ‘military’ interventions and debates tend to focus on whether such interventions are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in general. This article aims to open up scholarly engagement on the topic of the thorny reality of interventions in different contexts by reconceptualising international interventions as ‘security interventions.’ The article draws attention to the ambiguous meaning of ‘security’ as both an objective (i.e. safety) as well as a practice (military forces, police, intelligence agencies and their tactics), something that is reflected in the different approaches to be gleaned from the security studies literature. From this ambiguity, it derives two interlinked concepts: ‘security culture’ and ‘security gap,’ as analytical tools to grasp the complexity of international interventions. The concept of ‘security culture’ captures specific combinations of objectives and practices. The concept of ‘security gap’ captures the particular relationship or the distinct kind of ‘mismatch’ between objectives and practices as it occurs in a ‘security culture.’ This reading of international interventions through the concept of ‘security culture’ and the interlinked analytical tool ‘security gap’ allows an analysis and understanding that goes beyond simplistic assumptions both about traditional military capabilities and the role of the ‘international community’ as a unitary actor

Resilience and resilient in Obama’s National Security Strategy 2010: enter two ‘political keywords’

Under US President Obama, the words resilience and resilient have been applied beyond the odd occasion in the National Security Strategy (NSS) document. Through a systematic analysis of the NSS 2010, the research behind this article sought to determine if there was anything in this linguistic phenomenon of interest to scholars in political studies. The article argues that what makes the appearance of the two words in the NSS 2010 relevant is not what these words do but what is done to them in the text. It shows how the document constructs resilience and resilient in a distinct way as symbolic tools with a high degree of semantic openness, a particular positive connotation and deontic meaning. The article argues that the use of the two words in the NSS 2010 can be seen as an exercise in ‘occupying’ them with ideologically loaded meanings, which can be interpreted as the actualisation of both words as ‘political keywords’. The article demonstrates the relevance of this insight for political scholars as the ground for future explorations of the popular discourse of ‘resilience’ through the concept of ‘political keywords’

Negotiations of the "New World": the omnipresence of "global" as a political phenomenon

"Global" is everywhere – recent years have seen a significant proliferation of the adjective "global" across discourses. But what do social actors actually do when using this term? Written from within the political studies and International Relations disciplines, and with a particular interest in the US, this book demonstrates that the widespread use of "global" is more than a linguistic curiosity. It constitutes a distinct political phenomenon of major importance: the negotiation and reproduction of the "new world". As such, the analysis of the use of "global" provides fascinating insights into an influential and politically loaded aspect of contemporary imaginations of the world

From “economic and social questions” to national containers and two notions of ‘political’: findings of a systematic analysis of the symbolic construction of ‘economic problems’ in the League of Nation’s Bruce Report (1939)

My paper contributes to our understanding of the symbolic construction of ‘economic problems’ in international organisations in the 20th century. It is part of a broader research endeavour into the history of ‘international economic thinking’. ‘International economic thinking’ refers to the ideas regarding the (world) economy that have been generated within the distinct institutional context of 20th -century-international organizations and international non-government organizations. The study of the symbolic construction of ‘economic problems’ contributes to this broader endeavour as it focuses on a central ideational driving force of (national and international) collective action: problems that need to be solved. My empirical focus in this paper is the League of Nation’s document The Development of International Co-Operation in Economic and Social Affairs: Report of the Special Committee (League of Nations 1939), called Bruce Report. The Bruce Report is the product of a Special Committee that met in August 1939 to suggest reforms to the League’s organisation regarding the dealing with what was at that point called ‘technical problems’. The Report is interesting because it is about the reform of exactly those parts of the League of Nations that deal with economic and social issues. Hence, I asked: ‘How ’economic problems’ are symbolically constructed in this document?’ My systematic text analysis of the Bruce Report brings out four main findings: 1. There are no ‘economic problems’ in the world of the Bruce Report. There are ‘economic and social questions’. 2. Economic and social questions relate to issues that are (distinctly) political, objective, organic and universal. 3. Economic and social questions relate to issues that exist contained within nation-states. 4. Economic and social questions relate to issues that are at the heart of/essential for international order and the project of global civilisation. My paper elaborates and supports these findings by providing empirical evidence. It concludes by suggesting four sets of questions to be taken up in subsequent analyses of other documents, such as texts produced in the context of ECOSOC. One of them is: Is the Bruce Report a discursive exemption in regard to the absence of ‘economic problems’? If not, do ‘social and economic questions’ ever get discursively separated? If so, when, how and with which consequences? Relatedly, is the distinction between ‘problems’ and ‘questions’ in the text simply a linguistic preference or is it significant

From hybrid peace to human security: rethinking EU strategy towards conflict: the Berlin report of the Human Security Study Group

This report proposes that the European Union adopts a second generation human security approach to conflicts, as an alternative to Geo-Politics or the War on Terror. Second generation human security takes forward the principles of human security and adapts them to 21st century realities. The report argues that the EU is a new type of 21st century political institution in contrast to 20th century nation-states. 20th century nation states were based on a clear distinction between inside and outside. Typical outside instruments were state-to-state diplomacy or economic and military coercion. Typical inside instruments are the rule of law, politics, and policing. In today’s complex, contested and connected world, outside instruments do not work; they backfire and make things worse. Human security is about extending the inside beyond the EU