An introduction to the special issue: Ontological securities in world politics

A few years ago, as we began a conversation about ontological security, we were struck by the number of scholars we could think of in International Relations (IR) who were finding the concept to be a productive lens for thinking about the relationship between security and identity, and between identity and important outcomes in world politics. This special issue collects seven articles that have grown out of those discussions. In this introduction we briefly define and thematise the concept of ontological security and highlight how the various contributions to this issue pick up on and reflect those themes.

Ontological security refers to ‘security as being’, which Anthony Giddens contrasts to ‘security as survival’ (Giddens, 1991). If the latter calls to mind the familiar security concern of physical safety, ontological security pulls our attention elsewhere, to subjectivity more than physicality, highlighting that all political subjects face the need to maintain a sense of biographical continuity. The premise of ontological security, as discussed by Giddens, is that the formation of the subject is fraught with an underlying, ineradicable anxiety. Since all social actors need a stable sense of self in order to realise a sense of agency, managing that fundamental anxiety is an ongoing project. Actors are viewed as ontologically secure when they feel they have a sense of biographical continuity and wholeness that is supported and recognised in and through their relations with others. When the relationships and understandings that actors rely on become destabilised, on the other hand, ontological security is threatened, and the result may be anxiety, paralysis or violence. The need for a secure identity is important, therefore, both for what it enables – durable social relations – and for what its disruption can cause – conflict and violence. The centrality of anxiety is important because it suggests that even seemingly durable relations are always to some extent fragile, and so securing the subject at any one point in time is never the end of the story.

Ontological security was originally theorised in other disciplines – notably by RD Laing (psychoanalysis) and by Anthony Giddens (sociology). Critical of the inhumanity of late-modern societies, Laing (1960) writes of the range of threats to ontological security and existential anxiety that arise from the often engulfing and impinging character of conventional social structures and of the coldness of alienated social relations that commodify and depersonalise individuals. Here, Laing and other psychoanalysts, such as Jacques Lacan and Ashis Nandy, focus on the hidden transcripts of emotions and subjectivity, as well as on the unconscious dynamics behind these processes. Giddens, in turn, brings the concepts of ontological security and existential anxiety to bear on understandings of modernity and globalisation more generally, as he moves ontological security to the societal level and as he is careful to take into account a more structural understanding of the concept. All of these, and others (e.g., Winnicott, Klein), are important theoretical inspirations for the analysis of ontological securities in world politics.

We think that ontological security is particularly interesting in IR for three reasons, which are reflected in the emerging scholarship. Firstly, it is a different way of understanding security than is used in conventional IR theory, and therefore ‘security-seeking’ is through dynamics different from those that are traditionally studied. Not only does this draw attention to other types of action as security-seeking – habitual as much as intentional, routines and rhetoric as much as behaviour – but it also suggests that if the actors in world politics seek ontological as much as physical security, then conflict and war might result from different pathways, and be maintained through different dynamics, than those IR scholarship has recognised thus far (Mitzen, 2006b; Mitzen and Schweller, 2011; Lupovici, 2012). Indeed, the relationship between ontological security and conflict and violence is not straightforward. For example, increased perceptions of ontological insecurity and uncertainty can deepen, and even worsen existing conflicts in world politics (Delehanty and Steele, 2009; Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking, 2011; Steele, 2010). Ontological security needs can be met through conflict and war (Lupovici, 2012; Mitzen, 2006b). In addition, the routines that provide ontological security can be a source of anxiety or threat, since violence might be embedded in the subjectivities maintained through routines (Kinnvall, this issue).

Secondly, ontological security focuses attention on the relationship between uncertainty, anxiety and the capacity to maintain a stable sense of self. If actors are more prone to anxieties and crises of identity in conditions of globalisation, and if these in turn make violence more likely, then IR scholars need to understand the logics. It may well be that the collective traumas, ethnic conflicts, the securitisation of migration and discourses of terror that prevail due to the anxieties unleashed by globalisation and ontological security can help scholars gain analytic traction (Croft, 2012a, 2012b; Guzzini, 2013, 2015; Huysmans, 2006; Kinnvall, 2004, 2012; Solomon, 2012, 2014, 2015).

Thirdly, if actors gain ontological security through relations with others, then conflictual relations are not the sole locales where ontological security dynamics are in play. Such security dynamics should play a constitutive role for cooperative relationships, perhaps forming a social ‘glue’, enhancing the durability of cooperation (Browning and Joenniemi, 2013; Mitzen, 2006a); similarly, ontological insecurity and anxiety can be a positive springboard for new forms of political resistance and agency (Rumelili, 2011).

Thus far, IR scholarship on ontological securities in world politics has been varied, focusing on different referent objects (individual, society, group, state), different political outcomes (cooperation, conflict, violence; stability or change) and different methods (quantitative, qualitative, discursive). While on the face of it such differences would seem to pose a challenge to the goal of developing a coherent research agenda, we have found the range of work and diversity among ontological security scholars to be exceptionally productive, leading already to cross-fertilisation and the deepening of our own approaches, while also inspiring new collaborations. As we step back and reflect on what it would mean to define a ‘research agenda’ for the study of ontological securities in world politics, therefore, our first thoughts are that there is not one correct way to theorise how ontological security is constituted on a collective or global scale; there is not one correct way to think of the implications of this posited need for world politics. That is, there is no single overarching Ontological Security Theory of World Politics. Resisting the urge to articulate such a theory reflects in part our own dispositions as scholars. However, there is also a principled argument for defining the research agenda through its diversity and advancing a pluralistic agenda, which is to avoid premature closure on the concept’s application and relevance to world politics.

That is not to say that ontological security scholarship lacks a core. As noted above, it is fundamentally focused on attempting to articulate the relationship between identity and security, and between identity and important political outcomes in world politics, with the premise that political subjectivity is socially constituted in ways that have reverberating effects at many levels. A focus on ontological security puts the emphasis on what goes into the stories or narratives we tell ourselves about ourselves and our relations to others. It is a call to investigate cognitive and affective reasons why individuals, groups and even states experience insecurity and existential anxiety and to explore the emotional responses to these feelings. In contrast to constructivist and/or post-structural understandings of identity and security, however, ontological security studies treat individuals as linked not only structurally, but also through their reasoning and perceptions, their scripts, schemas and heuristics, as well as through their emotional inter-subjectivity, in which they continually receive and give emotional messages – often unconsciously (Craib, 1989, 1994; Vogler, 2000). The emphasis is on how discursively constructed subject positions are taken up by concrete social actors through choice and fantasy identification/emotional ‘investments’ (see Barker, 1999; Hall, 1992; Kinnvall, 2012; Zarakol, 2010).

As scholarship has accumulated, synergies between ontological security and other thematics are coming into focus, which we look forward to exploring in future work. For example, whether drawn from Critical Theory, feminist and post-structural models or from the discourse on human rights and development, a set of common concepts, notably ‘threat’, ‘human security’, ‘gendered experience’, ‘securitisation’ and ‘emancipation’, focus our attention on the ontological and psychological aspects of security. Work on securitisation and de-securitisation, friendship and enmity, emotions and trauma (e.g., Aradau, 2004; Edkins and Pin-Fat, 2005) productively overlaps as well. Similarly relevant is a body of literature concerned with the ontology of space and temporality, manifest in various ideas about borders, security and the politics of exception (e.g., Rumford, 2006; Salter, 2008; Vaughan-Williams, 2009, 2015).

At the same time, the accumulation of ontological security scholarship in IR makes clear that there are disagreements among those deploying the concept. Some of the differences are deep and substantive. For example, scholars disagree on whether ontological security is a trans-historical need or one that arises, as Giddens argues, with modernity. Perhaps the deepest disagreement among scholars lies with whether the study of ontological security opens up or closes down the question of the subject in world politics. Croft and Vaughan-Williams (this issue), for example, productively locate some ontological security theory as more reformist/problem solving, while others locate it as more revolutionary, reflecting resistance and critical stance; Chris Rossdale (2015), on the other hand, argues that linking up the production of subjectivity to any idea of security is a disciplinary move that cannot help but close down the very question it is meant to open. While we disagree with Rossdale, we find his intervention an important provocation.

Other distinctions in the scholarship are matters of emphasis. Most ontological security scholars within IR have proceeded from either Giddens’ inter-subjective notion of self where states, like individuals, are concerned with maintaining a consistent notion of self to enhance their ontological security in relations with other states. From here, taking an inter-subjective or external approach to the constitution of state identity, some argue that the state as an ontological security seeker maintains self-concepts in international society, especially in and through relations with others (Lupovici, in press; Mitzen, 2006a, 2006b; Zarakol, 2010). Taking a more internal or intra-subjective approach, others argue that state representatives seek to fulfil particular notions of self-identity as they define it. Brent Steele, for example, argues that a state’s notion of self relies not so much on its inter-subjective dimension as its ability to tell a convincing story about the self through autobiographical narratives (Steele, 2005, 2008; also see Krolikowski, 2008; Subotic, 2015).

While in the former the emphasis is on Giddens’ notion of inter-subjectivity and routines and in the latter it is on the importance of upholding consistent biographical narratives, both approaches have in common Giddens’ understanding of self-identity. They are also both concerned with finding a place for ontological security in relation to the realist and liberal conceptions of identity in IR Theory arguing in favour of a focus on states’ ontological security in addition to or instead of their physical security. In doing this, they challenge the exclusive association between security and survival, physical threat and defence made in conventional theories of IR, as well as the link between security and specific referent objects and the survival or threat-based conception of security defined by the Copenhagen School (see Rumelili, 2015a, 2015b).

Another body of literature has been less engaged with finding a place within IR Theory and more with the notions of what it means for any individual or group to be concerned with ontological security (e.g., Croft, 2012a, 2012b; Kinnvall, 2004, 2006; Krolikowski, 2008), and perhaps more significantly with ontological insecurity. These authors have emphasised both inter-subjectivity and autobiographical narratives as well as the psychological underpinnings of these, but they do not fully depart from Giddens’ notion of self. Here ontological insecurity refers to a state of disruption (mainly due to globalisation and neo-liberal policies), where the individual or collectives of individuals have lost their stabilising anchor (their sense of security) and their ability to sustain a linear narrative and answer questions about doing, acting and being. In line with Giddens, the tendency is thus to stress security-as-being rather than security-as-becoming, but with the caveat that this is a perceived need. The notion of physical security and the bodily basis of such security is not discussed in any detail; instead, the focus has been on those essentialising practices that work at an emotional level to create a belief in secure identities (security-as-being), with a particular focus on religious and nationalist narratives (see also Kay, 2012; Skey, 2010). In comparison to the more IR-focused literature that tend to emphasise stability and routines as crucial for upholding a sense of self, the society-based literature tend to be more concerned with interruptions and crises as referring to those circumstances when identity becomes increasingly essentialised and where others become more clearly defined.

Finally, we find some areas of disagreement to be less about ontological security per se than about other scholarly commitments. For example, some (see e.g., Krolikowski, 2008; Mälksoo, 2015) have criticised any treatment of the state as a unitary actor and ontological security provider, much less ontological security seeker. This is more a critique of the state as actor assumption than a contribution to ontological security theory. As such, what appears to be an indictment of the approach is on a closer examination folded into a difference in emphasis and audience, as Croft and Vaughan-Williams (this issue) suggest.

In any case, as we hope is clear, the research community of ontological security scholars is vibrant and wide-ranging, defined by a conceptual core and by the themes through which scholars register their disagreements. In this special issue we have collected some of the work that was produced or inspired by our initial meeting and exemplifies this spirit. The goal is to showcase some of the breadth of insights and possibilities and with the hope of broadening the conversation community on the topic of ontological insecurities in world politics.

The first two articles (Croft and Vaughan-Williams; Browning and Joenniemi) are conceptual, taking stock of existing work on ontological security and offering a critical appraisal of how the scholarship has developed and what the possible directions forward might be. These texts prompted a debate among ourselves about what it means to be critical and what it means to seek identity, as well as whose security matters within the discipline of IR as much as in the world. As articles they discuss the subjective and foundational dimensions of ontological security in both philosophical and existential terms and approach the ‘level-of-analysis’ problem from new perspectives. Both articles are concerned with the attention paid to security-seeking behaviour of much ontological security analyses and proscribe that complementary attention be paid to vernacular security studies, as well as to analyses complicating the relationship between self and identity. The articles provide a fresh reminder of how difficult it can be to traverse academic disciplinary boundaries of security studies and IR and how important it is to go beyond such disciplinary limitations.

The researchers in this special issue differ on whether ontological security is distinctively modern or whether it can be productive to treat it as a trans-historical need. Zarakol takes the latter stance in her piece, proposing that the state is only one form of ontological security provider and discerning a general model of ontological security provision that can be applied to other forms of political authority.

Regardless of how the need for ontological security is located in history, it is generally agreed that in this contemporary, late-modern world there is less actors can take for granted, which makes ontological insecurity and existential anxiety more common and decision-making more difficult. The remaining four articles (Steele, Kinnvall, Agius and Combes) all focus in one way or another on ontological insecurities and securitisations of subjectivity, an idea associated mostly with Kinnvall (2004, 2006) and treated in these articles as both a psychological and a structural process. Their very different approaches to their questions suggest different ways of bringing the analyses of individual and group violence to the state level and back.

For example, Steele draws on ontological security to understand US policy, specifically the re-embrace of the practice of torture, focusing in particular on the organisational practices and routines of the CIA as a key site that shapes the state’s mode of providing ontological security. Kinnvall, in turn, seeks to make sense of the 2012 Delhi gang rape through an ontological security lens, highlighting how the local event was constituted not merely ‘bottom up’ by the actions of individuals but also through regional and global discourses and power structures. Rape as a gendered trauma is a symptom of both the patriarchal order and partly also of India’s role in the world. Steele’s and Kinnvall’s analyses both treat the state as an ontological security provider and both highlight gender (albeit in different ways) as a crucial constitutive dimension of ontological security-seeking. We also see through these analyses that re-embracing torture in the USA and subscribing gendered violence as a governance solution in India both exemplify how ontological insecurity can be met and resolved through illiberal means.

From here, the next two articles (Agius and Combes) consider how a focus on ontological security might inform our understanding of the constitution and dynamics of threat at the state and societal levels. Agius draws attention to the differences in Swedish and Danish policy responses to the Mohammed cartoon crises, and the article highlights how, despite these differences in policy response, both were underwritten by a similar conception of the Muslim Other. While Agius keeps the analysis at the level of elites in policy positions, Combes is more interested in what is going on at the societal level in her analysis of the reaction in US society to the Boston Marathon bombers. These bombers were simultaneously us and not-us, insiders and outsiders, thus constituting a particular form of strangers inside our community. Combes focuses our attention on strangers as a site of expressing and managing anxiety at the societal level.

The fact that four of the seven pieces in this issue are concerned with securitisations of subjectivity lends support to Browning and Joenniemi’s critique (this issue) that ontological security scholarship focuses disproportionately on negative security dynamics. However, beyond being concerned with securitisations of subjectivity, these articles have distinctive perspectives and approaches, displaying different foci and modes of analysis, different methods to get at the insecurities of publics, and different ways of conceptualising the state. This range suggests the fecundity of an ontological security research agenda. As such, we look forward both to continuing the conversations inspired by arguments presented here and also in the future to exploring non-securitising dynamics of ontological security-seeking in world politics.