Abstract
With the aim to delineate a meaning of security which applies both to traditional and critical approaches to security, this chapter analyses the discursive patterns which are generated by the construction of objects and subjects in terms of security within traditional approaches.
This approach is informed first by the insight that an understanding of what security refers to exists which is shared by traditional and critical approaches to security and which the latter continue to refer to. It secondly argues that this meaning is not to be found on the level of concrete objects and subjects which have been greatly expanded by critical security studies. The chapter focuses on the case studies of security as survival/death, the figure of the judge in Hobbesian thinking as well as state sovereignty. The latter of these is being analysed from a perspective of IR theory as well as with view to historical processes of state formation to extrapolate the types of discursive patterns the state and state sovereignty stands in for. It is argued that, ultimately, security signifies the boundaries of intelligibility itself while in concrete cases it signifies the boundaries of a discursive order towards its outside.
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Notes
- 1.
Foucault (2001: 119) points out that the state of nature in Hobbes’ writing is not only hypothetical because it is an imagined starting point of polities but also that the state of nature as imagined by Hobbes, is defined by the constant potential of a war of all against all, not its constant actualization.
- 2.
Immortality as imagined in Christianity and Islam, both of which have influentially shaped Western modernity, maintains a fundamental separation between life and death and thus do not break with the notion of life as curtailed by death.
- 3.
Of course, some tendencies towards increased decentralization may be permitted within the framework of modern sovereignty. However, this potential would seem to extend only so far as not to touch upon core functions of the state—such as property rights, taxation codes, law and the legitimate use to violence, amongst others.
- 4.
This understanding of security does not have to apply to all cultures in the same way. As outlined, we may identify traditional (though decreasingly numbered) cultures in which death is not constructed as the ultimate threat to security. Whether or not the same is the case in relation to culturally held values and ways of organizing society, that is, whether alternatives to or attacks upon the system of organizing socio-political relations are necessarily understood as a threat within the dominant thinking of societies is a question for empirical analyses. A relevant question for analysis would also be whether other aspects (such as religious understandings) may take the place of socio-political organization and how this affects the understanding of threat and security within any given context. With this in mind, I would suggest that rather than to attempt to identify an understanding of security which spans all potential cultural contexts, it would be more fruitful to consider similarities and differences in the different concepts relating to threat and security and potentially to refer to them through differing terminology if and when differences are found to be too stark to be aligned.
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Broecker, H. (2022). Investigating the Meaning of Security. In: Securitisation as Hegemonic Discourse Formation . Contributions to International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16206-0_3
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