[PDF] Crisis And Ontological Insecurity eBook

Author : Filip Ejdus
Publisher : Springer
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 50,79 MB
Release : 2019-07-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 303020667X

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This book develops a novel way of thinking about crises in world politics. By building on ontological security theory, this work conceptualises critical situations as radical disjunctions that challenge the ability of collective agents to ‘go on’. These ontological crises bring into the realm of discursive consciousness four fundamental questions related to existence, finitude, relations and autobiography. In times of crisis, collective agents such as states are particularly attached to their ontic spaces, or spatial extensions of the self that cause collective identities to appear more firm and continuous. These theoretical arguments are illustrated in a case study looking at Serbia’s anxiety over the secession of Kosovo. The author argues that Serbia’s seemingly irrational and self-harming policy vis-à-vis Kosovo can be understood as a form of ontological self-help. It is a rational pursuit of biographical continuity and a healthy sense of self in the face of an ontological crisis triggered by the secession of a province that has been constructed as the ontic space of the Serbian nation since the late 19th century.

Author : Brent J. Steele
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 44,37 MB
Release : 2008-03-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 113598008X

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The central assertion of this book is that states pursue social actions to serve self-identity needs, even when these actions compromise their physical existence. Three forms of social action, sometimes referred to as ‘motives’ of state behaviour (moral, humanitarian, and honour-driven) are analyzed here through an ontological security approach. Brent J. Steele develops an account of social action which interprets these behaviours as fulfilling a nation-state's drive to secure self-identity through time. The anxiety which consumes all social agents motivates them to secure their sense of being, and thus he posits that transformational possibilities exist in the ‘Self’ of a nation-state. The volume consequently both challenges and complements realist, liberal, constructivist and post-structural accounts to international politics. Using ontological security to interpret three cases - British neutrality during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Belgium’s decision to fight Germany in 1914, and NATO’s (1999) Kosovo intervention - the book concludes by discussing the importance for self-interrogation in both the study and practice of international relations. Ontological Security in International Relations will be of particular interest to students and researchers of international politics, international ethics, international relations and security studies.

Author : Dmitry Chernobrov
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 15,33 MB
Release : 2019-06-24
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1786610043

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Winner of the 2019 Edgar S. Furniss Book Award from the Mershon Center for International Security How do people make sense of distant but disturbing international events? Why are some representations more appealing than others? What do they mean for the perceiver’s own sense of self? Going beyond conventional analysis of political perception and imagining at the level of accuracy, this book reveals how self-conceptions are unconsciously, but centrally present in our judgments and representations of international crises.Combining international relations and psychosocial studies, Dmitry Chernobrov shows how the imagining of international politics is shaped by the need for positive and continuous societal self-concepts. The book captures evidence of self-affirming political imagining in how the general public in the West and in Russia understood the Arab uprisings (also known as the Arab Spring) and makes an argument both about and beyond this particular case. The book will appeal to those interested in international crises, political psychology, media and audiences, perception and political imagining, ontological security, identity and emotion, and collective memory.

Author : Bahar Rumelili
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 221 pages
File Size : 11,80 MB
Release : 2014-12-17
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1317750160

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This volume highlights the ways in which the prospect of peace can generate anxieties and consequently set in motion social and political processes that reproduce and reactivate conflicts. In analysing this issue, the volume builds on the notion of ontological security and its recent applications to international relations theory. Although conflicts threaten the physical security of the parties involved, they also help settle existential questions about basic parameters of life, being, and identity, and thus over time become sources of ontological security. The prospect of peace, through the resolution or transformation of conflict, threatens to unsettle the stability and consistency of self-narratives, and their associated routines and habits at the individual, group, and state levels. The contributors argue two key points: 1) that ontological insecurity may set in motion political and social processes that reproduce and reactivate conflicts; 2) that coping with peace anxieties necessitates the formulation of alternative self-narratives at the individual, societal, and state levels that re-situate the Self in relation to Other and to the world at large. Consequently, the book analyses the ways in which, and the conditions under which, conflict resolution induces ontological insecurity, and the different ways in which ontological insecurity has prevented the successful culmination of peace processes in different conflict contexts, including Cyprus, Israel-Palestine and Northern Ireland. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, conflict resolution, peace and conflict studies, social theory and IR in general.

Author : Catarina Kinnvall
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 12,11 MB
Release : 2020-05-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0429559402

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The European Union (EU) faces many crises and risks to its security and existence. While few of them threaten the lives of EU citizens, they all create a sense of anxiety and insecurity about the future for many ordinary Europeans. This comprehensive volume explores the concept of ‘ontological security’ which was introduced into international relations over a decade ago to better understand the ‘security of being’ found in feelings of fear, anxiety, crisis, and threat to wellbeing. The authors make use of this concept to explore how narratives of European integration have been part of public discourses in the post-war period and how reconciliation dynamics, national biographical narratives and memory politics have been enacted to create ontological security. Within this context, they also discuss the anxiety of the ‘remainers’ in the Brexit referendum and the consequences of its failure to address the ontological anxieties and insecurities of remain voters. The book also explores: how European security firms market ontological security and provide an ontological security-inspired reading of the EU’s relations with post-communist states; the EU and NATO’s engagement with hybrid threats; and the EU as an anxious community. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal European Security.

Author : Denise Jodelet
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 33,11 MB
Release : 2020-04-18
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 3030393151

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This book illuminates the importance of threat on the representation of everyday life, from an interdisciplinary perspective. Divided into three parts, the book sets out by addressing the conceptual aspects of threat and by opening views on phenomena and social processes associated with threat. It shows how threat constitutes an analytical category that simultaneously involves social, psychological, religious, historical and political factors, and calls for a sufficiently broad conceptual definition to integrate pluri-disciplinary contributions. The second part focuses on the building of threats, mainly the environmental threats that have reached a tragic dimension today and are a core aspect of world concerns, the contemporary global terrorism, the migrations and the challenges these bring to contemporary societies, as well as the threats associated with the emergence of nationalism and the diverse aspects of excluding the Other. The final part examines the coping strategies, including oblivion, denial and defiance associated with different sources of threats, for instance those arising from epidemic and collective diseases, financial technology, natural disasters and collective traumas.

Author : Marko Lehti
Publisher : Springer
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 16,13 MB
Release : 2019-08-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 3030220591

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This volume explores the Western-led liberal order that is claimed to be in crisis. Currently, the West appears less as a modernizing or civilizing entity leading the way and more as being engulfed in a deep crisis. Simultaneously, the West still appears to be needed in order to imagine the global order by promoters of liberal peace as well as its opponents. This book asks how and why “crisis” is needed for constituting “the West,” liberal, and global order and how these three are conjoined and reinvented. The book encompasses narratives endorsing and rejecting the West and the liberal international order, as well as alternative visions for a post-Western world conceived within the rising and challenging powers. The study is of interest to scholars and students of international relations, critical security studies, peace and conflict research, and social sciences in general.

Author : Erica Caple James
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 39,68 MB
Release : 2010-05-14
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0520947916

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Democratic Insecurities focuses on the ethics of military and humanitarian intervention in Haiti during and after Haiti's 1991 coup. In this remarkable ethnography of violence, Erica Caple James explores the traumas of Haitian victims whose experiences were denied by U.S. officials and recognized only selectively by other humanitarian providers. Using vivid first-person accounts from women survivors, James raises important new questions about humanitarian aid, structural violence, and political insecurity. She discusses the politics of postconflict assistance to Haiti and the challenges of promoting democracy, human rights, and justice in societies that experience chronic insecurity. Similarly, she finds that efforts to promote political development and psychosocial rehabilitation may fail because of competition, strife, and corruption among the individuals and institutions that implement such initiatives.

Author : Mai'a Cross
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 31,76 MB
Release : 2021-04-13
Category : HISTORY
ISBN : 0472132288

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The Russia-Europe relationship is deteriorating, signaling the darkest era yet in security on the continent since the end of the Cold War. In addition, the growing influence of the Trump administration has destabilized the transatlantic security community, compelling Europe—especially the European Union—to rethink its relations with Russia. The volume editors’ primary goal is to illuminate the nature of the deteriorating security relationship between Europe and Russia, and the key implications for its future. While the book is timely, the editors and contributors also draw out long-term lessons from this era of diplomatic degeneration to show how increasing cooperation between two regions can devolve into rapidly escalating conflict. While it is possible that the relationship between Russia and Europe can ultimately be restored, it is also necessary to understand why it was undermined in the first place. The fact that these transformations occur under the backdrop of an uncertain transatlantic relationship makes this investigation all the more pressing. Each chapter in this volume addresses three dimensions of the problem: first, how and why the power status quo that had existed since the end of the Cold War has changed in recent years, as evidenced by Russia’s newly aggressive posturing; second, the extent to which the EU’s power has been enabled or constrained in light of Russia’s actions; and third, the risks entailed in Europe’s reactive power—that is, the tendency to act after-the-fact instead of proactively toward Russia—in light of the transatlantic divide under Trump.