237 research outputs found
The environmental security debate and its significance for climate change
Policymakers, military strategists and academics all increasingly hail climate change as a security issue. This article revisits the (comparatively) long-standing âenvironmental security debateâ and asks what lessons that earlier debate holds for the push towards making climate change a security issue. Two important claims are made. First, the emerging climate security debate is in many ways a re-run of the earlier dispute. It features many of the same proponents and many of the same disagreements. These disagreements concern, amongst other things, the nature of the threat, the referent object of security and the appropriate policy responses. Second, given its many different interpretations, from an environmentalist perspective, securitisation of the climate is not necessarily a positive development
Reclaiming the political : emancipation and critique in security studies
The critical security studies literature has been marked by a shared commitment towards the politicization of security â that is, the analysis of its assumptions, implications and the practices through which it is (re)produced. In recent years, however, politicization has been accompanied by a tendency to conceive security as connected with a logic of exclusion, totalization and even violence. This has resulted in an imbalanced politicization that weakens critique. Seeking to tackle this situation, the present article engages with contributions that have advanced emancipatory versions of security. Starting with, but going beyond, the so-called Aberystwyth School of security studies, the argument reconsiders the meaning of security as emancipation by making the case for a systematic engagement with the notions of reality and power. This revised version of security as emancipation strengthens critique by addressing political dimensions that have been underplayed in the critical security literature
The discourse of Olympic security 2012 : London 2012
This paper uses a combination of CDA and CL to investigate the discursive realization of the security operation for the 2012 London Olympic Games. Drawing on Didier Bigoâs (2008) conceptualisation of the âbanopticonâ, it address two questions: what distinctive
linguistic features are used in documents relating to security for London 2012; and, how is Olympic security realized as a discursive practice in these documents? Findings suggest that the documents indeed realized key banoptic features of the banopticon: exceptionalism, exclusion and prediction, as well as what we call âpedagogisationâ. Claims were made for the
exceptional scale of the Olympic events; predictive technologies were proposed to assess the
threat from terrorism; and documentary evidence suggests that access to Olympic venues
was being constituted to resemble transit through national boundarie
'Memory Must Be Defended': Beyond the Politics of Mnemonical Security
This article supplements and extends the ontological security theory in International Relations (IR) by conceptualizing the notion of mnemonical security. It engages critically the securitization of memory as a means of making certain historical remembrances secure by delegitimizing or outright criminalizing others. The securitization of historical memory by means of law tends to reproduce a sense of insecurity among the contesters of the âmemoryâ in question. To move beyond the politics of mnemonical security, two lines of action are outlined: (i) the âdesecuritizationâ of social remembrance in order to allow for its repoliticization, and (ii) the rethinking of the selfâother relations in mnemonic conflicts. A radically democratic, agonistic politics of memory is called for that would avoid the knee-jerk reactive treatment of identity, memory and history as problems of security. Rather than trying to secure the unsecurable, a genuinely agonistic mnemonic pluralism would enable different interpretations of the past to be questioned, in place of pre-defining national or regional positions on legitimate remembrance in ontological security terms
The international politics of geoengineering: The feasibility of Plan B for tackling climate change
Geoengineering technologies aim to make large-scale and deliberate interventions in the climate system possible. A typical framing is that researchers are exploring a âPlan Bâ in case mitigation fails to avert dangerous climate change. Some options are thought to have the potential to alter the politics of climate change dramatically, yet in evaluating whether they might ultimately reduce climate risks, their political and security implications have so far not been given adequate prominence. This article puts forward what it calls the âsecurity hazardâ and argues that this could be a crucial factor in determining whether a technology is able, ultimately, to reduce climate risks. Ideas about global governance of geoengineering rely on heroic assumptions about state rationality and a generally pacific international system. Moreover, if in a climate engineered world weather events become something certain states can be made directly responsible for, this may also negatively affect prospects for âPlan Aâ, i.e. an effective global agreement on mitigation
Securitization in Chinese climate and energy politics
This article provides an overview of securitization in Chinese climate and energy debates. Scholars have debated the merits as well as the potentially problematic implications of securitization, or framing issues as âsecurity,â since the early 1990s. Early concern focused on the potential problems with linking environmental issues with âsecurity,â and the debate has since also turned specifically to the climate and energy. However, it is only recently that this debate has begun to pay attention to China. Energy and climate concerns are of increasing importance to China: the sheer scale of its energy consumption and air pollution struggles dwarf the challenges seen by other states, and its policy choices play a key role in shaping global climate and energy dynamics. Thus, while securitization in the Chinese context is rarely studied, how China frames its energy and climate policy matters. Both energy and climate are taken increasingly seriously, and security plays an increasing role in debates. This review surveys the increasing popularity of linking security with climate and energy issues both in the academic debate on China and in official discourse, and some of the potential implications
Analysing the European Union's responses to organized crime through different securitization lenses
In the past 30 years, organized crime (OC) has shifted from being an issue of little, or no concern, to being considered one of the key security threats facing the European Union (EU), the economic and political fabric of its society and its citizens. The purpose of this article is to understand how OC has come to be understood as one of the major security threats in the EU, by applying different lenses of Securitization Theory (ST). More specifically, the research question guiding this article is whether applying different ST approaches can lead us to draw differing conclusions as to whether OC has been successfully securitized in the EU. Building on the recent literature that argues that this theoretical framework has branched out into different approaches, this article wishes to contrast two alternative views of how a security problem comes into being, in order to verify whether different approaches can lead to diverging conclusions regarding the same phenomenon. The purpose of this exercise is to contribute to the further development of ST by pointing out that the choice in approach bears direct consequences on reaching a conclusion regarding the successful character of a securitization process. Starting from a reflection on ST, the article proceeds with applying a âlinguistic approachâ to the case study, which it then contrasts with a âsociological approachâ. The article proposes that although the application of a âlinguistic approachâ seems to indicate that OC has become securitized in the EU, it also overlooks a number of elements, which the âsociological approachâ renders visible and which lead us to refute the initial conclusion
Hungary and the European Union: the political implications of societal security promotion
Hungary's constitutional commitment to support kin-nationals beyond its borders (nation policy) has been a central feature of its post-1989 foreign policy and highlights a particularly important national security concernâthe societal security of national identity, culture, language and tradition. This article examines Hungary's societal security concerns and the policy methods it utilises, including its EU membership and the promotion of minority rights at the European level, to help combat these concerns. It is suggested that Hungary has found it somewhat difficult to balance its societal security policy objective with internal economic demands on its welfare system and its external foreign policy objective to maintain good neighbourly relations. This article also notes that Hungary's attempts to Europeanise, or rather 'EU-ise', minority and ethnic rights issues as a means to enhance societal security for the Hungarian nation has certain political consequences for the EU. This suggests that societal security provision is an issue that cannot be overlooked when trying to understand the longer-term implications of EU eastern enlargement
The paths not (yet) taken: Ulrich Beck, the âcosmopolitized worldâ and security studies
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