Conflict Resolution and Ontological Security
Conflict Resolution and Ontological Security

Author: Bahar Rumelili

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-12-17

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1317750160

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This volume highlights the ways in which the prospect of peace can generate anxieties and consequently set in motion social and political processes that reproduce and reactivate conflicts. In analysing this issue, the volume builds on the notion of ontological security and its recent applications to international relations theory. Although conflicts threaten the physical security of the parties involved, they also help settle existential questions about basic parameters of life, being, and identity, and thus over time become sources of ontological security. The prospect of peace, through the resolution or transformation of conflict, threatens to unsettle the stability and consistency of self-narratives, and their associated routines and habits at the individual, group, and state levels. The contributors argue two key points: 1) that ontological insecurity may set in motion political and social processes that reproduce and reactivate conflicts; 2) that coping with peace anxieties necessitates the formulation of alternative self-narratives at the individual, societal, and state levels that re-situate the Self in relation to Other and to the world at large. Consequently, the book analyses the ways in which, and the conditions under which, conflict resolution induces ontological insecurity, and the different ways in which ontological insecurity has prevented the successful culmination of peace processes in different conflict contexts, including Cyprus, Israel-Palestine and Northern Ireland. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, conflict resolution, peace and conflict studies, social theory and IR in general.

Ontological Security in International Relations
Ontological Security in International Relations

Author: Brent J. Steele

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-03-10

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 113598008X

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The central assertion of this book is that states pursue social actions to serve self-identity needs, even when these actions compromise their physical existence. Three forms of social action, sometimes referred to as ‘motives’ of state behaviour (moral, humanitarian, and honour-driven) are analyzed here through an ontological security approach. Brent J. Steele develops an account of social action which interprets these behaviours as fulfilling a nation-state's drive to secure self-identity through time. The anxiety which consumes all social agents motivates them to secure their sense of being, and thus he posits that transformational possibilities exist in the ‘Self’ of a nation-state. The volume consequently both challenges and complements realist, liberal, constructivist and post-structural accounts to international politics. Using ontological security to interpret three cases - British neutrality during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Belgium’s decision to fight Germany in 1914, and NATO’s (1999) Kosovo intervention - the book concludes by discussing the importance for self-interrogation in both the study and practice of international relations. Ontological Security in International Relations will be of particular interest to students and researchers of international politics, international ethics, international relations and security studies.

Constructing Europe's Identity
Constructing Europe's Identity

Author: Lars-Erik Cederman

Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9781555878726

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The authors assess not only the benefits, but also the costs of attempts to assert a European identity. Referring to debates about the respective merits of deepening and widening, they address the equally important associated tradeoffs between exclusion and dilution: they point to the risks on the one hand of a Europe that excludes foreign goods, immigrants and entire countries, and on the other of an unfocused definition of Europe that may dilute the very values that a "European identity" is intended to protect.

Ontological Insecurity in the European Union
Ontological Insecurity in the European Union

Author: Catarina Kinnvall

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-21

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0429559402

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The European Union (EU) faces many crises and risks to its security and existence. While few of them threaten the lives of EU citizens, they all create a sense of anxiety and insecurity about the future for many ordinary Europeans. This comprehensive volume explores the concept of ‘ontological security’ which was introduced into international relations over a decade ago to better understand the ‘security of being’ found in feelings of fear, anxiety, crisis, and threat to wellbeing. The authors make use of this concept to explore how narratives of European integration have been part of public discourses in the post-war period and how reconciliation dynamics, national biographical narratives and memory politics have been enacted to create ontological security. Within this context, they also discuss the anxiety of the ‘remainers’ in the Brexit referendum and the consequences of its failure to address the ontological anxieties and insecurities of remain voters. The book also explores: how European security firms market ontological security and provide an ontological security-inspired reading of the EU’s relations with post-communist states; the EU and NATO’s engagement with hybrid threats; and the EU as an anxious community. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal European Security.

Rethinking European Union Foreign Policy
Rethinking European Union Foreign Policy

Author: Ben Tonra

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9780719060021

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This text reviews a variety of approaches to the study of the European Union's foreign policy. Much analysis of EU foreign policy contains implicit theoretical assumptions about the nature of the EU and its member states, their inter-relationships, the international system in which they operate and the nature and direction of European integration. In many instances such assumptions, given that they are not discussed openly, curtail rather than facilitate debate. The purpose of this book is to open up this field of enquiry so that students, observers and analysts of EU foreign policy can review a broad range of tools and theoretical templates from which the development and the trajectory of the EU's foreign policy can be studied.

Ontological Insecurities and the Politics of Contemporary Populism
Ontological Insecurities and the Politics of Contemporary Populism

Author: Brent J. Steele

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-05-31

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1000885771

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This book explores contemporary populist politics through the lens of ontological security theory. It shows that the 'divisionary politics of populism' is fostered by narratives of crisis and insecurity surrounding the imagined Self that gives shape to 'the people' that populism claims to represent. The loss of faith in mainstream political parties and moderate electoral candidates seems characteristic of the Zeitgeist in much of the Western world and beyond. Politicians and agendas propped up by a discourse that antagonizes established political elites on behalf of a reified, and homogenized people has become a trend in the politics of several countries. This book has brought together a team of worldwide renowned specialists on ontological security to grapple with the contemporary populist challenge through the conceptual lens of ontological security theory. From crises of democracy in the West, to backlashes against democratization in the Global South, this collection not only unveils fundamental structures underpinning these significant and current phenomena. It also provides us with the analytical tools to understand other occurrences of populist politics that are gaining traction across the globe. This book will be of great interest to upper-level students, researchers, and academics in Politics, International Relations and Security. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Cambridge Review of International Affairs.

Civilian or Military Power?
Civilian or Military Power?

Author: Helene Sjursen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-13

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1317998014

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This text critically examines the belief that the EU not only has an impact on the international system but also a ‘normative’, ‘civilian’ and ‘civilizing’ power. The contributors question whether this assertion fits with the empirical record or is merely based on anecdotal evidence and whether there is a theoretical basis for the expectation of a ‘normative’ or ‘civilizing’ power. Moving the research agenda forward, the book establishes criteria and assessment standards for examining the EU’s international role and its putative normative dimension. Such an endeavour is particularly important against the backdrop of recent developments in European security and defence. The acquisition of military means, or the EU’s ambition to acquire such means, might weaken at least the argument that the EU is a ‘civilian’ power and could provoke a shift towards a policy more akin to traditional ‘great powers.' This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Identity, Ontological Security and Europeanisation in Republika Srpska
Identity, Ontological Security and Europeanisation in Republika Srpska

Author: Faris Kočan

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-11-30

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 303146169X

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This book discusses the impact of the process of accession to the European Union (EU) – i.e. Europeanisation – on the formulation of the ethnic identity of Bosnian Serbs and the political identity of Republika Srpska (RS) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The centrepiece of the book is an examination of how it is possible that the expected effect of Europeanisation on ethnic identities in a post-conflict environment – a transformation of ethnic identities through desecuritisation – does not materialise in the case of BiH and the RS. The book starts from the assumption that the political elite in the RS uses Europeanisation as a context for the securitization of two sources of threats – the internal and external Other. This prevents the transformation of ethnic identities in BiH, and as a result also the desecuritisation of antagonisms among the ethnic groups of BiH. The results show that any attempt at a more active engagement by the EU and international community was interpreted by the RS political elite as Bosniak agenda aimed against the RS. In this respect, the book demonstrates that BiH’s EU accession process or a clearer EU perspective alone in scrutinized critical junctures did not outweigh the potential costs for the RS political elite if reforms aimed at creating a more functional BiH were to succeed. In all three analysed critical junctures, the political elite in RS presented motions for a more functional BiH as attempts to centralise the country and framed them as the beginning of the end for the RS as a political entity.

Crisis and Change in Post-Cold War Global Politics
Crisis and Change in Post-Cold War Global Politics

Author: Erica Resende

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-05-02

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 3319785893

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This volume analyzes crises in International Relations (IR) in an innovative way. Rather than conceptualizing a crisis as something unexpected that has to be managed, the contributors argue that a crisis needs to be analyzed within a wider context of change: when new discourses are formed, communities are (re)built, and new identities emerge. Focusing on Ukraine, the book explore various questions related to crisis and change, including: How are crises culturally and socially constructed? How do issues of agency and structure come into play in Ukraine? Which subjectivities were brought into existence by Ukraine crisis discourses? Chapters explore the participation of women in Euromaidan, identity shifts in the Crimean Tatar community and diaspora politics, discourses related to corruption, anti-Soviet partisan warfare, and the annexation of Crimea, as well as long distance impacts of the crisis.