Securitisation theory - International Relations (3/7)

securitisation theoria has taken a quite radical departure from the way we used you to talk about security because when we talk about security we tend to assume that there must be things out there that are security threats and that's why we have the word security and then we take this word security and we go around and see where it fits to those things and we assume that the task of security analysts basically is to assess one of the biggest threats what are how to be deal with what and then tell the policymakers these are really serious things you better do so and so on the point of securitisation theory is to say well it's actually the other way around there are no natural things out there that are security threats and others that aren't it's more that we as communities politically choose sometimes to deal with things in a particular way we name certain things security problems and when we do that something happens to that issue and to our interaction around it the point here is that when you say terrorism is a security threat or you say climate change is a security threat you're saying this is something existential that could be overriding normal issues it's not a normal issue we can leave to normal politics and see maybe we deal with it maybe we don't maybe we do this maybe we didn't that no it's a necessity in something that should not be allowed to happen there's an existential threat here if we allow it to happen everything else will be lost it will be too late it will be gone we have to deal with and because it's in necessity it is outside the normal bounds of political rules and we therefore can allow extraordinary measures like war political violence secrecy in the way we keep documents we all know that for reasons of security so-and-so is is not public and so on we can have conscription other measures we usually wouldn't do we can violin is the international treaties and so on so the point here is that instead of assuming that issues out there run around somehow being are not being security issues and we should try to run after them and put labels on them it sounds like we try now to understand what is that particular thing we are doing when we are labeling something a security issue and more specifically is happening in is in a process where a securitizing actor says this is an existential threat therefore we have to act upon it therefore it's legitimate to do something we otherwise couldn't do and the relevant audience say yeah we accept that thereby we grant you the right to use extraordinary measures securitisation theory works with with a relatively small number of core concepts that are closely linked to each other and that's kind of the apparatus you take and use and in a specific case they're also close to time because they're all closely your mention all of them when you tell the basic idea of securitisation so the fact that a securitization is a situation where referent object depicts an existential threat and justifies the to the relevant audience the use of extraordinary measures it all goes in one sentence but you all have to pick up each of the key concepts out and say what was it we said here we said there's a referent object something is depicted as existential threatened and that obviously has to be something we want to survive it doesn't help to go out and say some nasty bug is existential threatened then people was a great you can't justify extraordinary measures and that it has to be the nation or the state of freedom or our future welfare it's something by people say that has to survive that can't go therefore you can justify extraordinary ways so the referent object is something constructed in the move itself that's the performativity of it but it has to be one that you are able to get away with saying it has to survive a key concept in the construction which has maybe get got too little attention in the early versions of the theory but I would today say is maybe the most important is the audience because it's not just a matter of threat speak anyone can stand up and say this or that is a threat something happens at the moment when audience accepts that because of this threat alleged threat they are willing to accept that we go to war keep secrets shut down this debate make whatever extraordinary otherwise you wouldn't do so the crucial decision is in some sense taken by the relevant audience a lot of people take then the audience to mean the Democratic public and say therefore the theory can only be used in the West or something like that now the relevant audience can be very different depending on what kind of issue it is what kind of political system it is maybe in a autocratic system the ruler only has to convince and inner circle of 20 generals around the table but if they usually would do this and he suddenly said now we have to do that if he would say we have been doing so for until now but now we should invade Kawai then you would still have to make an argument that is beyond text or the usual justify something extraordinary like invading the neighbouring country so there's always an audience you have to convince and that is the crucial event that's the difference that securitisation makes that when you have thought that that issue has changed from being one kind of issue to another kind of issue and it has new implications then there is a securitizing actor doing this in a lot of the traditional security theories you wouldn't be very clear on where the referent object or actors the same you talk about state security but it is to state the actor or the referent object and so on when you move into all the new threats it's quite clear you have to make this distinction because you can maybe say the state wants to securitize for the state to survive but when you start to talk about the survival of the nation as an identity community it becomes very dubious if you say the nation acts that's kind of mysterious you can say this right-wing group stands up and claims that it speaks on behalf of the nation and therefore we should stop immigrants because it's a security threat or you go to the environment the whales have to survive because otherwise we will no longer be able to begin the world we want to be and but it's not the waves or saying that it's Greenpeace who say is the way you'll have to search to survive and so on so the referent object and the securitizing actor a two key concern implied in this thread is also then that that is an existential threat you have to say it's not something that just go in the weighing normal weighing of issues maybe this maybe that is something that has to be solved it is unacceptable but we don't deal with so it has to take priority therefore urgency there for extraordinary measures in the ages a lot of critical acts this peace movement another sort it's a great idea to have more kinds of security it's in a sense a way to keep the military down you're not the only ones doing security the the environmental movements that dealing with security as well health is the security issue as well it was a way to relativize the the importance of the military and then I was a little worried that people took it so lightheartedly and and said all we can call this security we can call that security as if it had no price to do there so the whole argument of securitization theory is to say you pay a very high price if you want to deal with something in a security mode it's always a trade off you gain something by calling something a security issue typically you gain urgency priority focus ability to act and so on but you pay a price in terms of freezing it mentally as something given by D democratizing you're saying this is a necessity this is something we can't discuss by creating a kind of a them construction where the problem is out there we are the solution and so on for instance in relation to the environment that is maybe problematic because in some sense we are the problem and we're the solution but we buy securitizing to be able with the problem out somewhere so in that sense the idea of securitization theory is to enter that discussion about whitening and say hmm let's be a little more careful about just thinking the more security the better security is at best and necessary evil at best you might say we don't really believe we can handle this problem with normal measures we might have to use extraordinary measures that is a kind of failure so callous Asia theory is not an IR theater in the sense that it has it is that it being a general theory about international relations as such it's a security theory so it's taking its clue from the area of security developing a theory and you can go out and use that theory on lots of areas some of them even to some extent beyond but was traditionally seen as security the theory has then been used in different ways a lot of people have used it on specific case studies and say let's see what happened in the escalation of this conflict how access and one side started to depict an existential threat from the other side justifying extraordinary measures maybe you even study the whole conflict constellation look at the other side see how they build up a security construction that justifies extraordinary messages you might even go on then try to do what you do about this conflict can you what D securitize it as you would say in the language of the theory take it out of the security framing and thereby maybe get it what not one notch down but you also a lot of people have used the theory on specifically the new security issues of saying what is happening now when we take in an issue that previously was not considered security like religion or climate change what happens when issues that are very unlike the old security issues suddenly get into the security framing does it kind of shape that issue in unfortunate ways that suddenly has the security labeling does it enable new form of actions problematic actions or useful actions etc so a lot of the literature has been about this what happens when something transforms from being not security to being security where the theory has most often not been seen as the most attractive is when you get very close to classical issues things that everyone take to be security issues classical military issues classical great power issues where everyone will say sure that's a security issue we don't want to discuss how it got there we know it's there because it's there because it has to be there and where the question it could also have been a non security issue is maybe not the most relevant I naturally think securitization theory has something to contribute and I would say we can then study how different securitizing actors want to make different reference objects the center of attention focus on different threats different extraordinary images so the variation the struggle going on within something that is generally accepted as a security issue is 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Keywords: security, politically, terrorism, policy, existential threat, ou_dd313

Id: wQ07tWOzE_c

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 03 2014