Blurring Borders: Investigating the Western/Global South Identity of Human Security

Abstract

In the globalizing international relations (IR) debate, the “West” and “Global South” have conventionally been presented as fundamentally different categories. This has disguised any interconnectedness between the two categories and variation within them. What does this mean for the quest for “Global South theorizing?” In order to address this binary logic in the globalizing IR literature, I analyze the case of human security as an example of Global South theorizing. First, I disentangle the Western/Global South origins and inflection of the human security concept and find that there is Global South agency related to its conceptual development, but also Western inflections. Second, I examine and compare the apparent rejection of the concept in two regions of the Global South—Southeast Asia and Latin America—and find both similarities and differences in their disinterest in engaging with the concept. Curiously, the similarities lie in the positionality of these regions and their difference to the West. In this way, the article points to the danger of using these categories in a manner that reemphasizes binary logics and their constitutive effects, and it exposes the complexity regarding what we consider Global South and Global South theorizing.

Keywords

international relations theory globalizing IR Global South human security Latin America

Some scholars have criticized international relations (IR) of being a parochial discipline—made for the West and of little relevance to the rest. Pushing against this inequality and parochialism, an important discussion within IR has therefore concerned that which various scholars have termed “non-Western IR,” “Global IR,” and “globalizing IR” (Acharya, 2014a; Acharya & Buzan, 2007; Jørgensen, 2017; Mandaville, 2003; Peters & Wemheuer-Vogelaar, 2016), and agreement seems to be growing that it is necessary to globalize IR and develop new conceptual frameworks for and by the Global South.¹

In these debates about Western-centrism and parochialism in IR, the “West” and “Global South” have conventionally been presented as two separate and fundamentally different entities. In other words, there is a tendency to render these entities categorically different, where the West is something completely distinct from the Global South. To complicate matters further, this bifurcation also suppresses and conceals any internal differences within these two categories, as these differences are subsumed in an overarching category defined by its otherness. In short, we observe a tendency to homogenize the West and Global South. The pitfalls of this categorization are thus 2-fold: (1) It obscures the interconnectedness between the West and Global South and (2) it obscures differences within the respective categories. While this categorization is prevalent in IR writings, some scholars have indicated an awareness of these tendencies (Bilgin, 2008b; Halperin, 2006; Mignolo, 2012), and Hutchings (2011, p. 646) has called for “a deconstruction of such self-identifications and a calling into question of the meanings of dialogue that continue to dominate mainstream and critical IR.” A need for greater awareness of and sensitivity to these pitfalls remains, however—especially within the globalizing IR debate, where these categories are an essential element of the research agenda.

In an attempt to address and question this imbalance in the globalizing IR literature, I critically dissect the categories used in the globalizing IR debate in order to reveal their constructed nature and constitutive power. Specifically, I address Hutchings’ call by examining the case of human security. Human security is a curious case in that it has been presented as a conceptual development that specifically addresses the forgotten security concerns of those living in the Global South and therefore of special relevance to these areas (Tadjbakhsh & Chenoy, 2007; United Nations Development Program [UNDP], 1994). Other scholars have argued that the concept is imbued with Western values and concerns (Barkawi & Laffey, 2006, p. 350). Consequently, the concept presents itself as an interesting case with which to critically analyze and deconstruct the notion of Global South theorizing.

First, we are presented with various questions regarding the identity of the concept: What does Global South theorizing mean and is human security an example of such theorizing? I address these questions by discussing the concept’s Western/Global South origins, demonstrating the complexity of such a quest. In so doing, I use the case of human security to address the first pitfall of the “West/Global South” categories and to illustrate a more general point about the complexity of Global South theorizing.

Studies have also attested to the concept’s limited success in the Global South (Acharya, 2001; Chandler, 2008). One might question why we observe this “Global South rejection.” With the aim of countering the tendency to homogenize the Global South, we should consider whether there might be different reasons for rejecting human security in the various regions of the Global South. Acharya (2001) has analyzed why human security has not gained traction in Southeast Asia, pointing to a certain pushback against the perceived Western attributes of the concept. Inspired by this critical analysis, I therefore investigate whether a similar rejection of the concept is present in another Global South region, namely Latin America. In other words, I deconstruct the notion of a coherent Global South by analyzing how this conceptual development has been received in Latin America and comparing it to Southeast Asia. The objective is not to provide a full account of human security approaches in the Latin American context but rather to critique the tendency to homogenize the Global South.

The article makes two interlinked contributions: (1) It offers reflections on when something can be considered a Global South concept and (2) it goes against the tendency to homogenize the Global South and qualifies and adds nuance to the reasons for a Global South rejection of human security. First, it demonstrates the difficulty of perceiving the West and Global South as separate and isolated entities, demonstrating that what counts as a Global South contribution is not as straightforward as it might initially appear. Second, it opens up the category of the Global South and demonstrates that there are both commonalities and diversity within it. In other words, the article critically analyzes and deconstructs the key spatial categories used in the globalizing IR debate in order to inform and advance the IR discipline.

The article is structured as follows. The first part briefly reviews the charges of Western-centrism in IR and the call for developing new concepts for and by the Global South. This leads to a discussion about the binary terminology used in this debate and what the categories West and Global South denote. Building on these reflections, the second part presents the concept of human security and discusses whether it can be considered a case of Global South theorizing, highlighting the complexity of this term. The third section proceeds to tackle the homogenizing tendencies within the category of the Global South and asks whether we can discuss one coherent Global South rejection of human security. This is done by first reviewing an analysis of Southeast Asia and subsequently analyzing whether we observe similar explanations in the case of Latin America. By combining these three parts, this article deconstructs key spatial categories used in the globalizing IR debate and demonstrates their drawbacks. In so doing, the article offers some needed reflections for the globalizing IR debate.

IR and Its Western-Centric Limits

A strand of scholars has long criticized IR of being a parochial discipline, as its theories are derived from particular observations made in the West but claiming universal insights (Alker & Biersteker, 1984; Biersteker, 2009; Bilgin, 2015; Chan, 1997; Crawford, 2001; Hoffmann, 1977; Jahn, 2000; Walker, 1984). Many IR scholars have tended to view the Global South as a place for “fieldwork and theory-testing, rather than for discovery of new ideas and approaches” (Acharya, 2014a, p. 648). As such, there has been a hierarchical division of labor: the thinkers in the West and the data collectors in the Global South. In other words, the Global South has been perceived less as an agent of IR knowledge and more as an object of IR study (Tickner, 2003). A critical strand of scholarship consequently argues that our understanding of world politics is limited by this parochialism and Western-centrism (Bilgin, 2016; Brown, 2001; Crawford, 2001). One of the consequences of the ethnocentricity in theory building is that theories built on Western experiences address Western concerns as opposed to the issues and challenges facing most citizens and scholars (Neuman, 1998). IR’s built-in assumptions and demarcations are derived from Western experiences, experiences that are very different from the diverse experiences of the Global South (Ayoob, 2002). Global South issues are consequently overlooked or dealt with from a particularly Western perspective. Put differently, the existing IR theories might explain the West but cannot sufficiently account for the rest. IR has therefore been argued to be “increasingly irrelevant” to Global South scholars (Korany, 1986) and not reflective of “today’s global society” (Acharya, 2014a).

There has been growing attention to the issue of this disciplinary parochialism, and an important discussion within the discipline of IR since the turn of the new millennium has therefore concerned what various scholars have termed “post-Western,” “non-Western,” “Global,” or “globalizing” IR (Acharya, 2014a; Bilgin, 2008b; Mandaville, 2003). Common to the debate is the “dedication to IR’s (un)internationality” (Peters & Wemheuer-Vogelaar, 2016, p. 7), although scholars have pursued this objective in different ways. Some strands have focused on critically reexamining and decentering established narratives (Narayan & Harding, 2000; Nayak & Selbin, 2013; Ní Mhurchú & Shindo, 2016), while others have looked toward pluralizing the discipline by focusing on the emergence and development of new conceptual frameworks for and by the Global South (Aydinli & Biltekin, 2018; Tickner & Blaney, 2012, 2013).

In this context, human security can be perceived as an example of such a conceptual framework, as it has been articulated as a concept that finally addresses the forgotten and “all-too-real security issues of peoples in the South” (Christie, 2010, p. 174). While the globalizing IR debate is often articulated in terms of Global South theorizing, this does not exclude conceptual developments (which are also highly interrelated). Concepts are often perceived as more abstract notions, whereas theories are intended to provide a more organized explanation or understanding about a particular topic. Some argue that a theory should strictly explain and contain testable hypotheses of a causal nature and should be evaluated based on its ability to explain similar outcomes. Yet this definition of a theory has also been argued to be too constricting (Buzan, 2004). This argument is particularly important for the globalizing IR agenda, as Global South perspectives are dismissed on the basis that they do not constitute legitimate theories. In this regard, the concept of human security also serves as an example of how conceptual developments play a part in the globalizing IR project.

Conventionally, many of the studies in this globalizing IR debate have been framed in terms of a discipline dominated by the West and a forgotten and marginalized Global South. However, studies have also pointed to how this terminology (unwittingly) involves both underscoring and defining the Global South by its difference from the West while obfuscating possible internal divergences within the categories (Bilgin, 2008b; Hutchings, 2011). These issues become central when attempting to develop new conceptual frameworks from the Global South, as they raise a whole set of complicated and interrelated questions regarding the possibility of separating Western theorizing from Global South theorizing, along with how to comprehend possible differences within the Global South. I expand on these considerations in the following section.

Binary Logics and Global South Theorizing

In order to better address concerns outside the West and advance our understanding of them, parts of the globalizing IR debate have focused on developing new conceptual frameworks by and for the Global South. However, whether and when something can be considered authentically, Global South/local is a complex, multilayered question, as it taps into various debates about critical geography and how placedness affects our knowing and concepts (Agnew, 2007).

Terminology such as the West and Global South is often associated with a conventional understanding of geography, where these concepts are perceived as neutral categories that denote geographical spaces. These spaces are imagined to exist on a map that can be divided by clear lines. Accordingly, you are per definition on one side of the line and cannot be on both sides of it. In other words, we traditionally subscribe to a binary understanding of geography, where spatial categories are conceived as separate and discrete.

The globalizing IR debate begins with the Western-centrism in IR, where the other is distinguished from the West, which has been contrasted with various concepts such as “the East” (Chan & Mandaville, 2001; Hobson, 2012), the “non-West” (Acharya & Buzan, 2007; Eun, 2018; Hutchings, 2011), and the Global South (Alejandro, 2018; Mansour, 2017; Nayak & Selbin, 2013). Common to all of these concepts is that their meaning and identity are constituted by an imaginary, binary, adversarial relationship with the West (Doty, 1996; Said, 1978). Put simply, the West is something in and of itself, and “this something” is completely different from the East/non-West/Global South, as we make sense of something by identifying what it is not.

But one might argue these prevalent dichotomies to be excessively simplistic. As Agnew (2007, p. 141) frames it,

Places are often thought of as if they are “bunkers” or isolated communities separated from everywhere else…Recent thinking in human geography suggests that relational spaces and relatively bounded places coexist and interrelate rather than being mutually exclusive.

As binaries, these categories are by definition relational, as they would not exist without each other (Barkawi & Laffey, 2006). By the same token, scholars have pointed to the interconnected nature of the West and Global South (Smith, 2018) to the extent that the two can be argued to be mutually constitutive. The West did not emerge in a vacuum. It is also shaped by non-Western ideas and traditions that have subsequently been appropriated and molded in a manner that is now “claimed Western” (Halperin, 2006; Hutchings, 2011). Similarly, the non-West and Global South have been shaped and defined by their relation in terms of their “otherness” to this Western construct, again showing the intimate and constitutive relationship between the two (Bilgin, 2008b; Mignolo, 2005). By focusing on their opposition to one another, these prevalent dichotomies also tend to obscure the diversity within these categories by homogenizing the areas and people included in them. Considerable variation exists within the West, and, for example, Jørgensen and Knudsen (2006) highlight the continental diversity within European IR, where countries have different cultures, histories, and positions, which in turn affect the research being made. In similar fashion, Schmidt (2006) argues that while the United States and UK have long enjoyed a liberal political culture, Eastern European countries are still coming to grips with their communist histories. Similarly, the Global South also encompasses incredibly diverse geographies, cultures, peoples, and experiences (Blaser, 2013; Cohn, 1987).

Taken together, these insights speak to the understanding that spatial categories denote more than geography; rather, they construct and reproduce certain imaginaries and relations (Agnew, 1994, 2016; Dalby, 1991; Dodds & Sidaway, 1994; Hettne, 2005; Ó Tuathail, 1996). These categories can therefore be considered the “spatial structures through which people order their knowledge of the world” (Lewis & Wigen, 1997, p. xi) or even “spatial imaginaries” (Dalby, 2002).

IR knowledge is also ordered along these lines. In the globalizing IR debate, the need to develop conceptual frameworks by and for the Global South has been articulated (Acharya, 2011; Aydinli & Biltekin, 2018). Yet in view of the observations above, a pure Global South concept must be considered an ideal type, given that the Global South is not a place that exists in isolation but is constituted by and interacts with other geographies. In this way, the mission to globalize IR inherently possesses a certain pitfall, as this quest in itself reproduces these spatial imaginaries. There is a danger of repeating earlier discussions regarding “Third World theorizing,” where some scholars uncritically employed the categories of First/Third World, generating a dubious homogeneity within these entities (Berger, 1994, p. 258)—though other scholars did attempt to demonstrate the analytical irrelevance of the concepts by emphasizing particularities within the categories (Halliday, 1996, p. 13). This binary logic and “persisting conceptual opacity” have consequently been argued to be detrimental to the globalizing IR debate, as they “restrict analytical perspectives and hinder grasping the multiple and intersectional divides that exist in the discipline of IR” (Peters & Wemheuer-Vogelaar, 2016, p. 2).

Delving into this complexity is therefore challenging but also crucial for a debate about globalizing IR. In the next section, I use the case of human security to examine and illustrate this complexity: Can we understand human security as a conceptual development for and by the Global South? I investigate this question by discussing the concept’s Western/Global South origins, demonstrating both its boundaries and interconnectedness. After this analysis, I will in turn examine how scholars in Latin America and South Asia have received the human security concept in order to defy the tendency to homogenize the Global South and deconstruct this categorical space.

Human Security: A Case of Global South Theorizing?

Can human security be considered a case of Global South theorizing? This is a complicated question. The development of the human security concept can be situated within a larger debate about acknowledging marginalized Global South issues and engaging theoretically with them. Security studies can be considered a subfield of IR (Buzan & Hansen, 2009, pp. 19–20), and the same debate about the limits of Western-centric theories and concepts is also reflected here (Abboud et al., 2018; Ayoob, 1997; Bilgin, 2010). Barkawi and Laffey (2006) famously underlined that “security studies is by and for Western powers” (p. 344), and the critique has also been extended to critical security studies, which are similarly “marked by Western-centrism” (Salter et al., 2019, p. 22). Attention has therefore been paid to the generation of new conceptual frameworks that emphasize Global South agency and concerns, and here, the concept of human security has received particular attention (Christie, 2010; Newman, 2010; Thomas, 2001). The most defining feature of human security is arguable that the concept denotes a rethinking of the subject of security (Walker, 1997) from state security to the security of the people (Hampson, 2008; Owen, 2010). In other words, human security shifts the referent from the state to the individual. This shift is based on the observation that “the security of the state is not necessarily synonymous with that of the people who live within its physical boundaries” (Bilgin, 2003, p. 208). Instead, “human” security can be threatened by extreme poverty, environmental degradation, criminal groups, and even the state itself, and these threats often intersect both the domestic and international spheres (Bilgin, 2002; Herz, 2010; Pion-Berlin, 2005).

While these threats are global in nature, many of these security issues are especially prevalent in the Global South, and human security has therefore been articulated as a conceptual development that addresses the forgotten security concerns of those living in developing countries (UNDP, 1994, p. 22) and a concept of particular importance to the Global South (Tadjbakhsh & Chenoy, 2007, p. 35). Yet, at the same time, the concept has also been criticized for being imbued with Western values and concerns (Barkawi & Laffey, 2006, p. 350). Consequently, human security presents itself as an interesting case with which to critically analyze and deconstruct the notion of Global South theorizing: Is human security a Western concept or can it be considered an example of a conceptual development from the Global South? By tracing the intellectual development of the concept, the article challenges the binary logic inherent in the globalizing IR literature, confronting widely held beliefs about the Western or Global South origin of ideas. By examining the development and evolution of the human security concept, the article thus sheds light on the entanglements and interconnectedness that tie the West and Global South.²

The globalizing IR cause is united in its mission to revise, rethink, and rebuild the discipline with hitherto overlooked and marginalized insights from the Global South, making “the location and context of knowledge production” the focus of attention (Peters & Wemheuer-Vogelaar, 2016, p. 2). When focusing on developing new conceptual frameworks for and by the Global South, the geocultural identities of these concepts thus become particularly relevant. However, the previous section also considered how this West/Global South binary logic obscures the relationality between the two and emphasized the complexity of trying “to isolate the origin of objects and ideas” (Smith, 2018). In the following, I will disentangle human security’s Western/Global South origins and inflection, not to reify these categories as discrete but rather to highlight the complexity regarding what can be considered Global South theorizing. In order to engage more empirically with this debate, the ensuing discussion of human security as a Global South concept will structure the debate along two lines of inquiry: (1) conceptual development and (2) the architects behind the concept.

The Conceptual Development of Human Security

The human security concept emerged after the end of the Cold War, against the backdrop of the realization that the narrow state-centric understanding of security that had dominated Cold War security studies no longer fit with reality (Rojas Aravena, 2003). As Owen (2010, p. 51) frames it,

An array of harms that had been marginalized due to the prioritization of macro threats during the Cold War were suddenly in view, and the nation state was often found to be incapable or unwilling to protect citizens from these widespread vulnerabilities.

Human security redefines what constitutes a relevant threat to citizens by including forces such as extreme poverty, environmental degradation, and illicit trafficking in its conceptualization (Paris, 2001). These threats are especially prevalent for citizens in Global South countries, and human security is arguably borne out of an attempt to rethink security in a manner more aligned with what most of the world population experience every day. Human security has thus been articulated as a conceptual development concentrating on the forgotten security concerns of people living in developing countries (UNDP, 1994, p. 22). However, in much of the Global South, these threats were already prevalent before the end of the Cold War. Moreover, the Cold War was by no means “cold” in regions such as the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Instead, these state-centric threats interacted and multiplied with local dynamics in ways that arguably expanded and went beyond the traditional security perspective that dominated this period. The timing of the concept is interesting in this regard. The impulse to develop a new concept arose after the Cold War due to the changed security architecture in the West. Foreign states were no longer the biggest security threat. The big push for this conceptual development thus arose after the West also needed a new way of thinking about security, demonstrating how knowledge production generates and reproduces the marginalization in world politics. While the concept certainly also arose as an attempt to rethink security in a manner more aligned with the concerns of vulnerable people in the Global South, the particularity of its timing thus reveals how the West is also an integral part of and reason for this conceptual development. I explore this complexity further in the following section by examining the actors who developed the concept.

The Architects of Human Security

Most trace the first formalized conceptualization of human security to a 1994 UNDP report, which stressed the need to move to a more people-based notion of security and broaden our perception of what constitutes threats to human security:

The real threats to human security in the next century will arise more from the actions of millions of people than from aggression by a few nations—threats that will take many forms: 1) Unchecked population growth, 2) Disparities in economic opportunities, 3) Excessive international migration, 4) Environmental degradation, 5) Drug production and trafficking, 6) International terrorism. (UNDP, 1994, p. 34)

Many of these threats are principal concerns in Global South countries. As such, the concept of human security can be perceived as a response to security concerns mainly affecting Global South countries and the inadequacy of existing security lenses in addressing these concerns. While the UNDP headquarters is located in the United States, the agency is by nature multinational. The report is based on information and statistics from various UN agencies, global and regional organizations, and surveys conducted by UNDP field offices around the world. In other words, the empirical underpinnings of this conceptual development emerged from the Global South.

On a microlevel, the team behind the report consisted of a group of UNDP associates and a panel of academic consultants. If one adheres to the belief that, as investigators, we are shaped by our experiences and that this in turn influences how we see the world (Booth, 1996; Mignolo, 2009), then it is important to look at the individuals who crafted this report: Who are they? From where did they come? and What kind of experiences influenced their perspectives? Boiled down, then, the central question is whether these authors speak for the Global South. If we evaluate the team based on three factors argued to shape one’s outlook, namely nationality, education, and location (Gelardi, 2019), then the team appears more global than Global South (see Table 1), with a mix of Global South and Global North nationals. However, all of the consultants were educated and permanently based in the Global North, which arguably shapes both their academic outlook and their daily experiences. Curiously, a clear majority of the Global South individuals were South Asian nationals (three of the five UNDP team members), while only one of the Global South/dual citizenship consultants came from a country outside South Asia. If anything, the team was more South Asian than Global South.

Table 1.

Composition of the team behind the United Nations 1994 report on human security.

	Nationality	Education	Location
UNDP	Global North: 4 Global South: 5	Global North: 7 Global South: 2	All based at UN-NY at the moment of report^a
Consultants	Global North: 5 Global South: 2 Double citizenship: 2^b	Global North: 9 Global South: 0	Global North: 9 Global South: 0

Source: Based on information from CVs, personal web pages, and other available online sources with information on the team members listed in the 1994 report.

^aIt was not possible to identify with certainty the nationality of two of the consultants.

^bSeveral of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) team members resided outside of the United States before joining the UNDP.

In terms of support for human security as a concept, it has mostly been Western countries promoting the approach since its conception (Paris, 2001).³ This is somewhat curious, given how the human security framework was developed in the UNDP and intended to be of a more global nature. Its Western slant is made notable by the fact that Norway and Canada have been some of its strongest advocates, even though their conceptions differ slightly from those of the UNDP. These countries have principally focused on human insecurity stemming from violent conflict, whereas the UNDP directs attention to the broadening of issues such as financial and environmental concerns (Acharya, 2001; Bajpai, 2003). This demonstrates how there are also differences within the formalized “Western” framework, which also serves as a reminder to avoid homogenizing the West.

To recap, the motivation for a reconceptualization of the security concept was based on Global South concerns, but this project first came to the fore when the West took the lead. The concept was developed under the auspices of the UNDP, and the empirical basis for this development definitely appears to be the Global South. However, the team behind the report does not appear to be particularly shaped by Global South experiences; instead, we can identify a global team with a base in the West and with training in Western academia. All in all, the analysis demonstrates how there is Global South agency attached to the conceptual development of human security, unlike conventional security lenses. However, this does not mean that the concept is without its Western inflections. In this way, the analysis reveals the difficulty inherent in a dichotomous understanding of when something can be considered Global South and the complexity regarding “Global South theorizing.”

Homogenizing Tendencies and the Global South

While the previous section used the case of human security to illustrate the issues with perceiving the West and Global South as discrete categories, there is also a tendency to homogenize the Global South. In this section, I thus challenge a tendency to subsume all of the variation within the categories and present either the West or Global South as a homogenous whole. Again, the case of human security is useful, as the concept’s limited success in the Global South has been commented on by academics and policy makers alike (Chandler, 2008). I therefore investigate why we observe this Global South rejection and whether we find the same pattern and reasons for rejection in various regions of the Global South. By examining how scholars in different parts of the Global South have received the concept of human security, I thus deconstruct this preconception of a homogenous and generic Global South and reveal both the commonalities and differences within.

While the human security concept might well have arisen out of Global South concerns, the majority of academics outside of the West do not appear to have adopted this approach—as remarkable as that may be—favoring instead traditional security lenses or homegrown concepts (Chandler, 2008; Liu, 2012; Tickner & Herz, 2012). Acharya (2001) considered this phenomenon in the case of Southeast Asia, providing novel and insightful explanations. He found that while Asia hosts some of the strongest advocates of human security, there has also been surprising resistance to the concept from scholars in the region, and it has not been embraced to the extent one might expect.

Acharya (2001, p. 457) finds that one source of skepticism relates to the perceived association of human security with humanitarian intervention, which could undermine state sovereignty and the doctrine of noninterference—both guiding principles of IR in the region. In this sense, it is fair to talk of a “policy-oriented” rejection. The second explanation runs that existing homegrown concepts of security have addressed the same range of challenges that are highlighted by the human security framework (Acharya, 2001, p. 459). This might be labeled the “localist” rejection. Scholars particularly point to the existence of two local Southeast Asian concepts: comprehensive security and cooperative security (Acharya, 2001; Caballero-Anthony, 2004). The notion of comprehensive security was first developed in Japan in the late 1970s, with a particular focus on economic development, and the concept is consequently an attempt at broadening the security agenda by also focusing on economic insecurities (Radtke & Feddema, 2000). The other homegrown concept of cooperative security focuses on broadening the range of instruments to deal with security issues. Hence, cooperative security underscores multilateral agreements and inclusiveness, whereas human security is often isolated to a coalition of the like-minded (Acharya, 2001, pp. 455–456). However, the existence of these two homegrown concepts proves that Southeast Asian scholars long ago realized that the traditional security lens is inadequate for addressing their security concerns, and they have instead attempted to develop their own alternative conceptual frameworks that focus on a wider array of threats. In this sense, human security has arrived a little late to the party. Yet these local concepts and human security are not interchangeable, as the homegrown concepts give more importance to the state as the central actor and as security still denotes a state or regime security. In other words, there is no referential shift toward the individual.

The Global South is a heterogeneous assemblage of diverse geographies, peoples, and experiences, but it is often lumped together as one uniform category in IR (Kleinschmidt, 2018). The Global South has also been argued to be united by a shared global marginality and inequality, including when it comes to theorizing (Acharya, 2014b; Dirlik, 2007). While Acharya’s analysis is limited to Southeast Asia, we might therefore question whether we find the same underlying logics for the rejection of the human security concept in other regions of the Global South. Inspired by Acharya’s critical analysis, I will therefore investigate whether a similar rejection of the concept is present in Latin America, another Global South region. In other words, I deconstruct the notion of a coherent Global South by examining the similarities and differences between these Global South regions in the case of human security.

Countering the Tendency to Homogenize the Global South

Given the tendency to homogenize the Global South in the debates about globalizing IR, I want to qualify the argument about a Global South rejection of human security. In this section, I deconstruct the Global South category by examining the human security debate in Latin America and emphasizing both its parallels to and divergences from the debate about human security in Southeast Asia.

Similar to the case of Southeast Asia, Latin American scholars appear not to have embraced the concept of human security, favoring instead the homegrown concepts of democratic security and citizen security (Sorj, 2005; Thede, 2008; Tickner & Herz, 2012).⁴

By reviewing the literature on human security in Latin America, I identify three main explanations for this rejection: (1) the localist rejection, (2) the policy-oriented rejection, and (3) the classical rejection. The localist and policy-oriented rejections correspond to the explanations given by Acharya (2001) in his analysis of Southeast Asia. However, I also identify a third reason for not engaging with the human security approach that appears more particular to Latin America, which I label the classical rejection. While these three explanations are not mutually exclusive, I disentangle them apart in the following to better identify the different underlying logics and identifying overlaps with the explanations put forward regarding Southeast Asia.

The Localist Rejection

Parts of Latin American academia have long recognized that the traditional security lens is insufficient to account for regional insecurities, and they have instead produced their own alternative concepts. Studies reveal that academics in this region tend to favor the homegrown concepts of democratic security and citizen security over human security (Goldstein, 2016; Tickner, 2016). This rejection attests to a perception of human security as a Western concept designed for Western countries instead of a Global South concept. Part of this rejection therefore stems from the fact that this supposedly new conception of security, imposed from afar, has in fact already been considered by regional scholars. This explanation is similar to the case of Southeast Asia. In Southeast Asia, the human security concept is also late to the party.

The democratic security concept was conceived by the South American Peace, Security, and Democracy Commission as a “post–Cold War alternative” to the national security doctrine, which had dominated the region from around the 1960s (Tickner, 2016; Tickner & Herz, 2012). The national security doctrine was a specific military doctrinal framework that valued national (state) security over individual freedoms and held that the primary threats to state security were internal rather than external. Consequently, the doctrine refocused the armed forces’ attention toward combating these internal threats (Pion-Berlin, 1989). Where the national security doctrine embodied a highly militarized perspective dominated by the armed forces, democratic security was supposed to represent a “more encompassing and positive concept that prioritizes the needs of individuals to live in peace and to have access to the economic, political and environmental resources required for a dignified existence” (Somavía & Insulza, 1990, p. 7). While the concept of democratic security seems rather similar to that of human security, the fundamental referential shift is less clear. According to Tickner (2016, p. 151), “[d]emocratic security, notwithstanding its supposed emphasis on people, operates within the same state-centrism characteristic of traditional definitions of security.”

Citizen security is another homegrown Latin American concept favored by regional scholars. The concept emerged in the late 1990s following a surge of homicide and violence, and citizen security became “a discourse for conceptualizing the vulnerability to which ordinary people were exposed by criminal threat” (Goldstein, 2016, p. 278). More so than democratic security, citizen security encompasses the referential shift toward the individual by focusing on citizens instead of the state as the main security referent. The focus of the concept on crime also broadens the understanding of what constitutes a security threat. While this broadening impulse may appear similar to human security, citizen security is still more state-centric as the focus on crime in practice has contributed to a reauthorization of the state. As Goldstein (2016) argues,

despite this broadening effect, in practice citizen security focuses almost exclusively on threats posed by criminality; it demonizes criminals, authorizes state and popular violence, and undermines citizens’ basic rights in exchange for a promised security. Citizen security, then, like national security before it, narrows security to a focus on a particular perceived threat to public order and safety, while continuing to privilege the state as the only actor capable of producing and providing security.

The analysis above demonstrates that while the homegrown concepts of democratic and citizen security might appear similar to the concept of human security on the surface, they are not identical, as these homegrown concepts represent a more state-centric focus. Interestingly, Acharya (2001) found the same difference in Southeast Asia. Here, the homegrown concepts also denoted a broadening of the security concept but with an emphasis on the state as the main referent. The homegrown concepts in these two regions of the Global South are thus similar with respect to how they prioritize the principle of state sovereignty and nonintervention. However, they are not completely identical. Instead, these concepts remain the products of regional historical circumstances. In Southeast Asia, the homegrown concepts have attempted to place economic concerns at the top of the security agenda; by contrast, the focus in Latin America has been on curbing the influence of the military in domestic affairs. As this observation demonstrates, it is important to be attentive to both the similarities and differences within the Global South.

The Policy-Oriented Rejection

In Southeast Asia, another aspect of the rejection of the concept of human security stemmed from policy concerns, as some policy makers and academics view the concept as a tool of Western imposition (Acharya, 2001). Similar arguments are found in Latin America, where this broader definition of security threats creates the fear that these new spheres can become grounds for intervention (Herz, 2013a, p. 39). Put bluntly, parts of the Latin American academic community worry that this new concept of security may be used as a legitimizing discourse for intervention in other countries (Arzate & Velázquez, 2014, p. 58; Chillier & Freeman, 2005; Sorj, 2005, p. 43).

Latin America is arguably bound together by shared regional norms that are both “constitutive and regulative” (Kacowicz, 2005, p. 70). Latin American states have adhered to the principles of uti possidetis, convivencia (peaceful coexistence), and nonintervention (Child, 1988; Kacowicz, 2005; Merke, 2016), making respect for sovereignty the most defining feature of the region. Establishing sovereignty is the main concern of Latin American states, which have a long history of interventions. If the human security concept widens the scope of intervention, it therefore goes against core regional norms with the added fear that it could be used to justify new interventions within Latin America. The concept is supposed to capture the security threats prevalent in the Global South, so these threats will obviously be present in these regions. For Latin American countries,

The potential implications are enormous: to the extent that they prove themselves unable to control the continued, even deepening, social tensions within their borders, they may also expose themselves to being redefined as security threats to their (Northern) neighbors in our increasingly integrated hemisphere. (Thede, 2008, p. 51)

This stance parallels the concerns raised both in Southeast Asia and other Global South regions about the malleability of human security, which may allow for it to be used to legitimize intervention in the name of protection (Gjørv, 2016; Shani et al., 2007). This line of argumentation demonstrates how human security has been perceived as a potential tool for Western countries, not as a concept made for and by the Global South. Nonetheless, the location and history of Latin America in relation to the United States add specific context to this “policy-oriented rejection” in Latin America, demonstrating how similar features within the Global South do not necessarily denote homogeneity.

The Classical Rejection

While the policy-oriented rejection focuses on the political effects of human security, a more theoretically grounded pushback against the concept is also discernable. Instead of focusing on the effects of the broadening of the security concept (“the what”), some scholars also reject the shift in security referent (“the who”; Goldstein, 2016; Tickner, 2016). According to their argument, the individual’s security is a domestic issue, whereas state security is an international one. This insistence and preference for state-centric approaches is emblematic of Latin American security studies and IR in general (Medeiros et al., 2016; Tickner & Blaney, 2012; Tickner & Herz, 2012; Tickner & Wæver, 2009). Such a classical rejection has parallels to and overlaps with the policy-oriented rejection, but this rejection is more theoretical in nature and the criticism is typically directed at the referential shift. Even one of Latin America’s strongest supporters of the human security concept maintains that human security does not replace state security; instead, it “complements” and even “reinforces state security” (Rojas Aravena, 2007, p. 52).

The delimitation of security is partly a local concern stemming from Latin America’s history of the large-scale involvement of armed forces in politics, both in the fight against perceived national armed insurgencies and in the running of the state (Tickner & Herz, 2012). These historical lessons have thus created a need to constrain the power of the military in what are perceived to be domestic security issues (Herz, 2013b). Stemming from this concern, an argument coming out of Latin America runs that while this wider array of threats may be real, “they are neither directed at states nor are they military in nature” (Pion-Berlin, 2005, p. 216). In this respect, shifting the security referent to the individual jeopardizes this fragile balance.

While this preoccupation is particularly present in Latin America due to its historical experiences, there is a continued dominance of state-centric mainstream approaches in the Global South in general (Tickner & Wæver, 2009). Many states in the Global South are newer constructs with a colonial past, and this state-centrism can arguably be attributed to their concern with establishing sovereignty by delimiting domestic and international security concerns (Bilgin, 2010). In short, then, these state-centric approaches to security are not simply a reflection of a state-dominated world, but they help to constitute it (Bilgin, 2008a).

A Uniform Global South Rejection of Human Security?

The analysis makes the case for discussing a more general Global South rejection of the concept. Human security was intended to counter Western biases in IR and security studies. However, by not considering how Global South security concerns operate differently from and interact with Global North concerns, it seems as though the concept operates with a hidden bias against the Global South. This would at least appear to be how scholars in both Latin America and Southeast Asia perceive the situation. Human security has not gained traction in these regions, and the analysis pointed to a shared policy-oriented rejection based on fears that this new conceptualization of security may be used as a legitimizing discourse for intervention in other countries. Furthermore, existing homegrown security concepts have already addressed the same range of challenges highlighted by the human security framework. Overall, the analysis points to a shared pushback against the concept’s perceived Western attributes. Consequently, one can argue that the two regions appear to be united in their positionality against the West. It is therefore the contradictory relationship between West and Global South that in itself gives meaning to the Global South category. In this way, the analysis shows the constructed nature and constitutive power of these geographical categories.

However, the analysis also grounds these commonalities in historical experiences. While various countries and regions in the Global South have experienced state-building and outside intervention, their experiences are not identical, and the context for understanding this apparently similar rejection therefore becomes localized. In this way, “local circumstances shape whether and how these ideas are taken into local usage” (Acharya & Buzan, 2017, p. 11). The analysis also identifies a third classical reason for rejecting the human security concept. This classical rejection is more particular to Latin America, as it is emblematic of the dominance of state-centric approaches to IR in this region.

While the Global South is often referred to as a single category, these differences and localized contexts challenge this assumed homogeneity. This analysis emphasizes the need for an awareness of and sensitivity to differences within the Global South and underlines the complexity of discussing the Global South as a homogenous category in debates about globalizing IR.

Conclusion

In the globalizing IR debate, the West and Global South have conventionally been presented as discrete and fundamentally different entities. In other words, there is a binary understanding of these spatial categories, where the West is conceived of as something completely distinct from the Global South. To complicate matters further, this categorization also suppresses and conceals any internal differences within these two categories, as these differences are subsumed in an overarching category defined by its otherness. The pitfalls of this categorization are thus 2-fold: (1) It obscures the interconnectedness between the West and Global South and (2) it obscures differences within the respective categories. In line with a number of critical scholars (Bilgin, 2008b; Hutchings, 2011; Smith, 2018), I argue for the need for greater awareness of and sensitivity to these pitfalls, especially within the globalizing IR debate, where these categories are an essential element of the research agenda. Delving into this complexity is challenging but also crucial for the debate about globalizing IR.

In an attempt to address and question this imbalance in the globalizing IR literature, I critically deconstructed the Global South category often used in the globalizing IR debate in order to reveal its constructed nature and constitutive power. Specifically, I used the case of human security to examine and illustrate this complexity. Human security is a curious case, as it has been presented as a conceptual development that addresses the marginalized security concerns of people living in the Global South but has also been accused of being imbued with Western values and concerns. Consequently, the concept presented itself as an interesting case to critically analyze and deconstruct the notion of Global South theorizing.

This concrete case of a Global South conceptual development was therefore used to deconstruct the key spatial categories used in the globalizing IR debate. In this respect, the article made two interlinked contributions: (1) the identification of the complexity of what we consider Global South theorizing and (2) the critique of the tendency to homogenize the Global South.

Two major implications are drawn from this study: First, we need to devote more attention to the constitutive power of constructed geographical categories. On one hand, the analysis identified a shared pushback against the concept’s perceived Western attributes in both Latin America and South East Asia, consequently making a case for discussing a more general Global South rejection of the concept. Yet, in this case, the Global South is constituted by its opposition to the West, showing the constitutive effects of these binary categories. Second, we need to be more aware of and sensitive to differences within the Global South. In the analysis, I showed how scholars participate in a homogenizing exercise when we employ this general category of the Global South, thereby obscuring any differences within.

While the analysis offers some constructive insights for the debate on human security by situating the concept within the larger debate about Western-centrism in IR, these contributions are above all directed at the globalizing IR debate. It shows that while the ambition might be to create a more globalized and diverse IR, there is a danger of using these categories in a manner that reemphasizes binary logics and their constitutive effects.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Maiken Gelardi

Notes

Author Biography

Maiken Gelardi holds a PhD from the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University and does research on international relations theory and the debate about globalizing the discipline. She has worked in Latin America for several years and has been a visiting researcher at both FLACSO Ecuador and Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia.

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