How critical can critical be? Contesting security in Indonesia

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper examines discourses and practices of security in Indonesia. It does so in order to explore tensions between ethnographically generated accounts of security spaces and the broader security focus of international relations scholars. Looking at securitisation theory in relation to Indonesian security dynamics, it suggests that a model of security contestation better explains the ways in which political communities are constituted through the politicisation of security in Indonesia. The paper argues that there is a need to engage with and understand complex security dynamics on their own terms. It outlines a possible approach to achieving this aim by aggregating the reflexive inclinations of both the practice of ethnography in anthropology and critical security approaches to securitisation in international relations. It then shows how this approach can be utilised to engage critically with processes of contestation implicit to Indonesian security dynamics. In conclusion, it proposes ethnographic engagement as the basis for political critique central to securitisation as an interventionist project.