Ontological Security Research Articles

The anthropocentrism thesis: (mis)interpreting environmental values in small-scale societies

In both radical and mainstream environmental discourses, anthropocentrism (human centredness) is inextricably linked to modern industrial society's drive to control and dominate nature and the generation of our current environmental crisis. Such environmental discourses frequently argue for a retreat from anthropocentrism and the establishment of a harmonious relationship with nature, often invoking the supposed ecological harmony of indigenous peoples and/or other small-scale societies. In particular, the beliefs and values of these societies vis-à-vis their natural environment are taken to be instrumental in their low environmental impact. Here it is argued that, aside from the empirically problematic nature of such claims, the beliefs of small-scale societies have been seen through an ethnocentric discursive framework which bifurcates belief systems into anthropocentric and ecocentric. Taking a meta-theoretical approach informed by Strong Structuration Theory, it is argued that the beliefs of small-scale societies about their relationship with nature should be recognised as lying on a continuum of anthropocentrism and understood in the context of their attempts to establish ‘environmental ontological security’ in the face of natural uncertainty.

‘A Safe Place to be Happy and Content’: Housing and ‘Home’ in Women’s Desistance

Through narrative interviews with 15 women with histories of imprisonment in Aotearoa New Zealand, this article explores the role of housing and ‘home’ in women’s desistance. The article argues that safety and control are key psycho-social benefits of ‘home’ that support women’s ontological security. The women’s ‘homes’ – as sites of safety and control – could provide a space for them to construct drug and crime free identities and ultimately ‘do’ desistance. Moreover, their ‘homes’ became a physical manifestation or ‘expression’ of their changing identities which served to motivate and further reinforce their desistance.

The deterioration of Australia-China relations: what went wrong?

ABSTRACT Sino-Australia relations have experienced a rapid deterioration in the past half-decade. From genial ties centred around trade and exchange, the relationship has descended into mutual hostility, prompting the editor of China’s Global Times to notoriously liken Australia to a blob of gum on the bottom of a shoe. To explain the deteriorating relationship, scholars have proposed numerous ideas, pointing to factors as wide-ranging as ‘Chinese influence’, poor diplomacy efforts, and ontological (in)security touched off by neoliberal governmentality. The current paper examines these ideas in a literature review, then synthesises such ideas to provide its own explanation of why things ‘went wrong’. It also addresses corollary questions such as why Australia adopted a uniquely assertive China policy, and why this occurred specifically around 2017. We argue that the breakdown in relations can be attributed to the rise of nationalist, sovereignty-oriented movements in the West, and the spillover effect this had on Australian leadership; the profound uncertainty attending the election of Trump and his isolationist tendencies; and the shift to a more rigid, authoritarian approach to foreign affairs under Xi. This perspective adds to the literature by identifying failings on both sides while underscoring significant yet underappreciated global trends, such as nationalism.

The Ontological Security-Seeking Paradox: Domestic and International Effects of Public Architecture in North Macedonia’s ‘Skopje 2014’ Project

This article theorises the relationship between material environment and state ontological security by analysing how public architecture is used to defend, assert or construct state sense of self in international society. The article articulates the dynamic relationship between the two audiences of public architecture projects – international and domestic – and demonstrates how a project aimed at ensuring ontological security with one audience can produce anxiety and insecurity for the other. We illustrate this argument with the analysis of ‘Skopje 2014’ – a hugely ambitious architectural project by the government of Macedonia (now North Macedonia), designed to give the capital Skopje a completely new, neo-classical architectural look. However, instead of securing Macedonia’s ‘European’ visual identity, ‘Skopje 2014’ produced tremendous domestic political conflict and further removed Macedonia from the European cultural space it so much desired. Our study moves the scholarship on ontological security forward by specifying the dynamic trade-off between international and domestic security-seeking in contested polities.

Securing the Self, Embracing Anxiety, or Nurturing Growth? How the Pragmatism of Dewey, James, and Mead Speaks to Ontological Security Studies

Abstract A Pragmatist form of Constructivism speaks to, and encourages, an ethical/normative turn in Ontological Security Studies (OSS). Recognition that Self-securing routines are sometimes “unhealthy” implies that the subject of security is human experience and that social identities or social roles are means to that end. This resonates with John Dewey's Pragmatist focus on the practical task of ameliorating experience in environments constantly in the process of becoming. Normative value is not ontological, i.e., found in a fixed identity; it is processural, i.e., found in the practice of “learning” and the process of “growth.” A Pragmatist narrative of learning and growth offers OSS a normative focus that is more compelling than the recent calls to “embrace anxiety,” although it is important to acknowledge that even these narratives can induce anxiety. OSS can, in this instance, turn to the Pragmatist William James and his focus on the role that “faith” plays in encouraging the Self to adopt new identities. Building on this, Dewey formulated a “civic faith” to defend democratic routines (and the democratic identity) as a useful method of (social) learning. Finally, the Pragmatism of George Herbert Mead demonstrates how this democratic commitment to include “the Other” in the processes that secure the Self helps restructure an environment that otherwise demands dangerous routines. The article draws on Cold War history to demonstrate how such practices can and should be part of the “cultural repertoire” informing ontological security-seeking practices in contemporary Europe.

Business as usual like never before! Continuity, rupture and anxiety management in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum campaign

Ontological security-seeking has traditionally been considered to rest upon the stability and continuity of core auto-biographical narratives and everyday routines. ‘Critical situations’ which fundamentally destabilise these foundations of ontological security have thus hitherto carried a negative valence. Constitutional referenda proposing a radical re-organisation of collective political identities and daily life, therefore, are intriguing. A source of severe consternation for some, for others, potential change is positive, even thrilling. This article investigates this puzzling contrast, drawing on Ontological Security Studies’ (OSS) recent recentring of Existentialist thought and debates exploring the heterogenous potential of anxiety, and utilising the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence and the strategies for anxiety management embedded in the pro-independence ‘Yes’ campaign. Through analysis of dominant discourses grounding the argument for independence, findings demonstrate the simultaneous deployment of contradictory anxiety management strategies: independence was framed as a pathway to escape the instability and uncertainty of the status quo; as a pathway to continuity; and as a chance to embrace anxiety, to relish the opportunity and excitement of change. This article thus contributes to the prevailing critique of OSS’ over-privileging of stability and continuity in ontological security-seeking, yet problematises ‘either/or’ approaches to understanding anxiety management in critical situations and beyond.

Emerging Victims in Contemporary Drugs Policing

Abstract Recent shifts in UK policy have seen certain populations, who were predominantly viewed as offenders due to their involvement in drug offences, increasingly recognized as victims of exploitation. Drawing on qualitative data from three studies, this article interrogates how this trend is playing out within contemporary drugs policing, focussing on officers’ responses to people affected by: drug addiction, child criminal exploitation and ‘cuckooing’. It examines the tensions that arise as these three categories of emergent drug victims conflict with officers’ normative expectations of victimhood, perceptions of their role as police and existing operational strategies. It also reveals officers’ attempts to (re)gain ontological security by policing the boundaries of victimhood and re-focussing on new categories of offender.

Protecting the people: populism and masculine security in India and Hungary

ABSTRACT The article contributes to a comparative understanding of populism, securitization, and ontological security by demonstrating how masculinity plays a central role in invocations of insecurity. We argue that masculinity, understood as a set of gendered relations that helps in forging affective communities between populist leaders, the people, and objects of securitization, can provide useful insights into the political practice of populism and securitization. Building upon an analysis of the speeches of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, this article shows how right-wing populist constructions of security function by accommodating objects of securitization within an imaginary of family and kinship and invoking a familial bond between the populist leader and the objects of securitization. These constructions of security and terrorism are built upon similar gendered relations and influences across national contexts. In their constructions of security, both populist leaders invoke love and pride in gendered ways to create a familial bond between the populist leader and the people, even as they engage in acts of violence toward objects of securitization within a familial order by deploying idioms of kinship and the family.

The politics of time: Political entropy, settler colonialism and urban ruination in Hebron / Al-Khalil, Palestine

This paper explores the relationships between settler colonialism and temporal regimes of urban ruination in the Palestinian city of Hebron/Al-Khalil. The city is divided into two sectors: H1, controlled by the Palestinian National Authority, and H2, roughly 20% of the city, including 33,000 Palestinians and 700 Jewish settlers, living under direct Israeli military occupation. Drawing on fieldwork in H2, we identify several temporal formations shaping H2: the settler-messianic time that spatializes the past as a platform to facilitate colonial expansion; contemporary military control that seeks to destabilize Palestinian homes, their everyday lives and ontological security in the present; and the Palestinian effort to recalibrate the rhythm of elimination and recover the future. The paper develops the concept of political entropy: a temporal technology of control that builds on the process of natural decay. Israel uses the power of time and entropy to let Palestinian assets decay slowly while prohibiting proper renovation and maintenance. The mundane violence of political entropy tends to remain unseen, as the harm is done slowly, allegedly naturally. Facing the settler colonial temporalities that maintain a state of undecidedness, where deferral itself becomes a weapon which lets entropy operate without interruption, Hebron's Palestinian inhabitants aim at slowing down the effects of time by applying friction to the process of ruination, as well as by their insistence on futurability. By identifying the temporalities trapping the city's Palestinian population, our paper thus frames Hebron's H2 as space that is simultaneously ruined and reclaimed.

NATO's new front: deterrence moves eastward

Abstract Why has NATO taken so long in adapting its deterrence strategy to Russian revisionism and extending its military presence to the eastern allies? The setting up of NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) in Poland and the Baltic states offers a critical case for examining the changing understandings of allied deterrence in the post-post-Cold War era. eFP is a story of negotiating the political acceptability and military credibility of NATO's modern extended deterrence strategy in the exposed eastern flank, and the navigation of the alliance security dilemma in relation to Russia while buttressing the eastern allies' physical and NATO's ontological security. This article traces NATO's extended conventional deterrence posture in the eastern flank from the adoption of the tripwire model shortly after Russia's annexation of Crimea to the commitment to defend ‘every inch of Allied territory’ via embracing the forward defence stance in 2022. Mapping the evolutionary curve of NATO's post-enlargement politics of deterrence through documentary analysis and interviews with diplomats and military representatives in NATO headquarters and national capitals, the article makes two contributions. Conceptually, it dissects the political rationalities and historical analogies underpinning contemporary allied deterrence strategy and posture in NATO's eastern frontline. Empirically, the study illustrates how allied deterrence is made to matter on the ground, and why this matters for deterrence credibility.

‘BrOthers in Arms’: France, the Anglosphere and AUKUS

Abstract Important French foreign policy dyads, such as relations between France and the United Kingdom and France and the United States, have consistently been subject to empirical, historical and policy analysis. However, France's relationship with the broader Anglosphere is rarely considered or conceptualized. This article theorizes France's relationship with the Anglosphere at a pivotal historical juncture. The 2021 announcement of AUKUS, a security partnership between Australia, the UK and the US, spectacularly excluded France despite a shared proclivity to use military force in defence of liberal international order. To analyse this vital contemporary case, we undertake a comparative, computer-aided discourse analysis of 540 political and media texts, triangulated with thematic analysis of 37 elite interviews. First, contributing to constructivist and ontological security theory, we develop a novel theorization of alliance politics, generally, through the concept of ‘brOthers in arms’, whereby a double identity inscription binds allies antagonistically together. Second, contributing to critical studies of foreign policy and research on national identity, we locate France–Anglosphere relations, specifically, towards the thick end of an alliance identity spectrum, held together in mutual alterity by complementary, competing and co-constitutive exceptionalisms. Third, contributing to studies of foreign policy and alliance politics, our analysis situates AUKUS within the fractious longue durée of France–Anglosphere relations.

Conflict, gender and ontological security-seeking between Eritrea and Tel Aviv

ABSTRACT The proliferating research in ontological security (OS) studies explores how irregular situations of ‘radical disjuncture’ remove the protective cocoon of routinised trust relations that enables the actors to ‘bracket out’ daily threats and dangers. Following this loss of trust, the actors perform a variety of OS-seeking strategies in their attempts to re-establish their lost trust in themselves and their surroundings. But how do disempowered actors in global politics, who suffer multiple marginalities and flee states that turn against their own citizens, seek ontological security (OS)? Focusing on Eritrean asylum-seeking women in southern Tel-Aviv, we rely on ‘thick’ ethnographic data to demonstrate how even when statist violence is the norm, the quest for OS persists in unexpected ways. Adding new insight to the growing research on trust and OS in international relations (IR) and security studies, the article exposes the multiple emerging OS-seeking strategies that thrive in the developing spaces of global politics, while shedding new light on the gendered politics of migration.

Net Zero and Settler Futurity

Net Zero ideology promises that current and ongoing emissions can be partially offset by ‘negative emissions’ strategies such as carbon capture and sequestration, allowing carbon intensive firms to narrate themselves as agents that are solving ‐ not causing ‐ the climate crisis. This represents a shift in liberal and corporate environmentalism away from both denial and delay, towards a new strategy acknowledging the need to end fossil fuel use while urgently deferring transformations to a future made possible by not-yet developed technological innovations. Supporters see this as a sign that industry and governments are meaningfully considering the need to decarbonise, yet for detractors there is little faith in these narratives. This paper argues that a through-line of settler futurity provides affective infrastructure potent enough to transect opposing positions in minority world eco-politics, from pro-market green growth champions to pro-growth, antimarket ecosocialists. Settler futurity offers visions of possible and desirable futures where the affordances of modernity persist unchanged. To show how this infrastructure settles pro-capitalist and anti-systemic thinkers alike, I examine a variety of texts, from an industry-funded docuseries and a climate solutions book published by Bill Gates, to the ecosocialist work of Matt Huber. These strangely resonant environmentalisms comfort the discomforted, offering ontological security that ‘this’ life need not be undone in the pursuit of a viable and just future that extends abundance to all. Accordingly, settler futurity can be seen as an affectively charged presencing of the future, mobilising feelings of purpose, hope and confidence through promises to (eventually) become green, clean and carbon neutral. This raises important questions about what it might mean to work against/despite the allure of these pervasive narratives, which eliminate space for situating alternative visions, decolonial to degrowth. Unsettling settler environmentalism may require experimenting with approaches to confronting climate crisis that do not shy away from the difficult entanglements of life making and industrialised production, and that grapple with the affective work required to allow other futurities ‐ and therefore other ways of living well with, against and beyond the fossil-fuelled, imperial-capitalist present ‐ to exert their orienting presence.

Future notification: Living and breathing in post-pandemic climate change

In a post-pandemic context, everyday life, technology and media have become increasingly focused in the home. This has implications for how people will live with automated and smart technologies in possible futures, for electricity demand, transition to net zero emissions and ultimately planetary health. Here, we explore these unfolding circumstances through the prism of notifications, and their capacity to mediate uncertainties while enabling people to engage in anticipatory modes of home organisation which ensure their physical comfort and produce a sense of ontological security in pandemic and climate crisis situations. In possible futures, the notification may vary from its current characteristics, but would enable people to engage with everyday automated technologies and systems in ways that acknowledge values of place, safety and care.

Ontological Insecurity and the Return of the Greek-Turkish Conflicts: Reconfiguring Hagia Sophia as an Ontic Space

ABSTRACT This article locates the rising tensions between Greece and Turkey in the milieu of increasing ontological insecurity in the European periphery. Building on the growing literature on ontological security in IR, we argue that the dissipation of Europe as a framework of meaning and identity in the European periphery has generated ontological insecurity—a state of general anxiety which stems from the disruption of self-narratives—on part of the actors concerned. Following a decade and a half of rapprochement within the framework of Turkey’s EU membership bid, this ontological insecurity has created a longing for a return to the established conflict narratives and antagonistic identity constructions in Greece and Turkey. We show the linkage between ontological insecurity and the escalation of disputes by tracing the political and societal discourses surrounding the reconversion of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul from a museum back to a mosque.

How do urban green spaces influence heat-related mortality in elderly? A realist synthesis

BackgroundAn important consequence of climate change for urban health is heat-related mortality. Vulnerable groups, especially elderly, will be the most affected. A solution put forward in many reports and policy documents is the introduction or expansion of urban green spaces. While they have a proven effect in decreasing the ambient temperature and reducing heat related mortality, the causal pathways are far from clear. Moreover, results vary for different contexts, population types and characteristics of green spaces as they are ‘complex systems thrusted into complex systems’. To our knowledge, there is no systematic synthesis of the literature that examines the mechanisms by which and the circumstances under which green spaces work to decrease heat-related mortality for elderly.MethodsWe performed a realist synthesis– a theory-driven review method– to develop a complexity- and context-sensitive program theory. As a first step, a causal loop diagram was constructed which describes the possible pathways through which urban green spaces influence heat-related mortality in elderly. In a second step, one of the pathways - how they may lead to a reduction of heat-related mortality by increasing social capital - was further explored for underlying mechanisms, the context in which they work and the differentiated patterns of outcomes they generate. Literature was searched for evidence supporting or contradicting the initial programme theory, resulting in a refined theory.ResultsResults show how urban green space can impact on heat-related mortality in elderly by its influence on their exposure to outdoor and indoor heat, by improving their resilience as well as by affecting their access to treatment. Urban green spaces and their interactions with social capital affect the access to health information, social support, and the capacity for effective lobbying. Several mechanisms help to explain these observed demi-regularities, among others perceived behavioural control, perceived usefulness, receptiveness, ontological security, and self-interest. If and how they are triggered depends on the characteristics of the urban green space, the population, and other contextual factors.ConclusionLooking into the impact of urban green spaces on heat-related mortality in elderly, researchers and policy makers should take interest in the role of social capital.

Perceived Destination Restorative Qualities in Wellness Tourism: The Role of Ontological Security and Psychological Resilience

Scholarship on wellness tourism has experienced exponential growth. Despite this, limited studies have explicitly examined how the perceived destination restorative qualities of a wellness tourism destination facilitate psychological recovery. Findings from a survey with 942 Chinese wellness tourists revealed perceived destination restorative qualities positively influenced psychological recovery, increasing ontological security, with the effect diminishing as individual resilience increased. This research provides conceptual clarity on the intricate relationship between perceived destination restorative qualities and psychological recovery, highlighting the critical role of wellness tourism for alleviating stress, and threats experienced in everyday life. Future studies should conduct longitudinal studies focused on the psychological recovery of wellness tourists.

A Psychoanalytic Approach to Turkish Foreign Policy: Crisis, Disorder, and Disorientation

ABSTRACT What explains Turkey’s current foreign policy disorientation, causing the country to swing from one position to another in a relatively short period of time? We argue that rational arguments do not provide comprehensive explanations of the fluctuations in Turkish foreign policy. By utilising a psychoanalytic approach, this study argues that the relentless radical developments that unfolded at home and abroad in the past decade paralysed the Turkish leadership, disrupting their sense of order in international politics while detaching them from important geopolitical realities. Under this neurotic condition, Turkey’s leadership has engaged in a constant seek for recognition as a key regional player irrespective of how controversial these efforts may be. In making sense of this case, this study builds on the ontological security literature in International Relations and contributes to the existing debates on foreign policy crises by integrating a Lacanian notion of jouissance to the ontological security framework. It shows that the jouissance approach offers a productive lens which captures how an ontologically insecure state like Turkey follows disorderly conducts in international politics and gains satisfaction from it as a way to reassure its ruptured sense of actorness at times of multiple crises.

Illusions of independence: frustrated agency and the politics of great power (mis)recognition

How do declining great powers cope with a sudden loss of status? Great powers establish routinized relations of recognition to maintain and reproduce their status as great powers in the international sphere. During periods of structural change, when social norms and these routinized relations of recognition are in flux, the prospect of misrecognition is especially pronounced. Misrecognition leads to the experience of frustrated agency and ontological insecurity. In these scenarios, declining great powers assert agency over their status by anchoring their insecure identity in symbols that are expressive of their status as great powers. To illustrate this argument, the article considers France’s decision to develop an independent nuclear capability after the Second World War. Rather than an instrument of security, nuclear weapons gave France the illusion of an independent identity and offered ontological security.

From homelessness to hotel living during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT We explored life in a hotel where unhoused individuals were accommodated during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted hour-long semi-structured interviews with twenty residents of a lodging hotel in New York City to: (1) compare their current living situation with prior experiences of homelessness; (2) address how current needs were being met; and (3) assess how hotel living might facilitate residents’ transitions to more permanent housing. Although residents were unhappy with some hotel characteristics (e.g. inability to prepare food; sparse furnishings; burdensome security practices), they preferred the hotel to their previous living situations (the streets, in most cases) as hotel rooms offered autonomy, stability, and safety behind locked doors. We utilized the concept of ontological security to guide our analysis of these interview data. Building off this analysis, we argue that homeless services should directly involve people experiencing homelessness to develop residences that are more responsive to their individual needs.