State–society complexes in ontological security-seeking in IR

Abstract

This article provides a framework for theorising ontological security-seeking in IR in an analytically complex yet non-reductionist manner. Drawing on an historical-sociological perspective, it relocates the referent object of ontological security from the state to the state–society complex, thus enabling us to elucidate the links between individual, society and the state in ontological security-seeking, and to explicate the synergism between internal and external referentiality in the constitution of self-identity. I argue that ontological security is the result of mutual reflexivity in state–society relations. Where such reflexivity is low, ontological security-seeking lapses into the securitisation of identity. This theoretical framework is illustrated in the context of Russia’s ontological security-seeking.