scholarly journals Surveillance under dispute: Conceptualising narrative legitimation politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Christopher Smith Ochoa ◽  
Frank Gadinger ◽  
Taylan Yildiz
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
The Us ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Pragmatic Sociology ◽  
Normative Consensus

Abstract Current debates about surveillance demonstrate the complexity of political controversies whose uncertainty and moral ambiguities render normative consensus difficult to achieve. The question of how to study political controversies remains a challenge for IR scholars. Critical security studies scholars have begun to examine political controversies around surveillance by exploring changing security practices in the everyday. Yet, (de)legitimation practices have hitherto not been the focus of analysis. Following recent practice-oriented research, we develop a conceptual framework based on the notion of ‘narrative legitimation politics’. We first introduce the concept of ‘tests’ from Boltanski's pragmatic sociology to categorise the discursive context and different moral reference points (truth, reality, existence). Second, we combine pragmatic sociology with narrative analysis to enable the study of dominant justificatory practices. Third, we develop the framework through a practice-oriented exploration of the Snowden controversy with a focus on the US and Germany. We identify distinct justificatory practices in each test format linked to narrative devices (for example, plots, roles, metaphors) whose fluid, contested dynamics have the potential to effect change. The framework is particularly relevant for IR scholars interested in legitimacy issues, the normativity of practices, and the power of narratives.

scholarly journals Unfolding the Past, Proving the Present: Social Media Evidence in Terrorism Finance Court Cases

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 382-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tasniem Anwar
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Media Objects ◽  
Evidence Collection ◽  
Terrorism Trials ◽  
Made In

Abstract During terrorism trials, social media activities such as tweeting, Facebook posts, and WhatsApp conversations have become an essential part of the evidence presented. Amidst the complexity of prosecuting crimes with limited possibilities for criminal investigations and evidence collection, social media interactions can provide valuable information to reconstruct events that occurred there-and-then, to prosecute in the here-and-now. This paper follows social media objects as evidentiary objects in different court judgments to research how security practices and knowledge interact with legal practices in the court room. I build on the notion of the folding object as described by Bruno Latour and Amade M'charek to research the practices and arguments of the judges through which they unfold some of the histories, interpretations, and politics inside the object as reliable evidence. This concept allows for an in-depth examination of how histories are entangled in the presentation of an evidentiary object and how these references to histories are made (in)visible during legal discussions on security and terrorism. The paper therefore contributes to the field of critical security studies by focusing on how security practices are mediated in the everyday legal settings of domestic court rooms.

scholarly journals Nuclear (in)security in the everyday: Peace campers as everyday security practitioners

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Eschle
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
Peace Activists ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Peace Camp

This article extends the emergent focus on ‘the everyday’ in critical security studies to the topic of nuclear (in)security, through an empirical study of anti-nuclear peace activists understood as ‘everyday security practitioners’. In the first part of the article, I elaborate on the notion of everyday security practitioners, drawing particularly on feminist scholarship, while in the second I apply this framework to a case study of Faslane Peace Camp in Scotland. I show that campers emphasize the everyday insecurities of people living close to the state’s nuclear weapons, the blurred boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and the inevitability of insecurity in daily life. Moreover, campers’ security practices confront the everyday reproduction of nuclear weapons and prefigure alternative modes of everyday life. In so doing, I argue, they offer a distinctive challenge to dominant deterrence discourse, one that is not only politically significant, but also expands understanding of the everyday in critical security studies.

Public relations: Theorizing the contestation of security technology

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 531-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Monsees
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Security Technology ◽  
Vital Part ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

This article contributes to the emerging literature on publics within critical security studies. Its particular focus is on contestation in the context of diffuse security technology. Contemporary security practices are characterized by diffusion and dispersion. As a result, contestation of security technology is also dispersed and diffuse and requires an account of publics that is sensitive to this aspect. The article conceptualizes ‘multiple publics’ as a mode of fundamental contestation of established political institutions. In order to do so, it discusses previous approaches to sociotechnical controversies and material participation. As a result of this discussion, it becomes apparent that we need a concept of publics that does not reduce political contestation to a pre-existing set of institutions. I develop a notion of publicness that emphasizes the way in which publics are embedded in societal struggles. This is achieved by reading John Dewey as a theorist to whom contestation is a vital part of democracy. It becomes possible to understand contestation against diffuse security practices – such as surveillance – as forms of emerging publics, even though they might not feed back into governmental decisionmaking.

Imagining Amerika

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah C. M. Bulloch
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Colonial Mentality ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Moral Superiority ◽  
Socially Situated

The term “colonial mentality” is popularly used among many Filipinos to refer to a tendency to compare themselves negatively to Amerikanos. This chapter explores the everyday form such deprecating self/other constructions take on Siquijor, shedding light on how these constructions are socially situated and reproduced, their limits and their effects. It shows that comparisons between categories of Filipino and Amerikano must be understood in relation to local hierarchies. On Siquijor, local imaginings of Amerikano lifestyles and bodies not only serve as reference points for ideals of affluence and beauty, but act as markers of prestige in competitions for status between neighbours and kin, sustaining a sense of Amerikano superordinancy. While, on Siquijor, superordinancy usually presumes neither innate nor moral superiority, there is a strong presumption specifically that the “failure” of the Philippines to achieve similar levels of affluence to the US is due to moral deficiencies of the Filipino self.

Security Practices and the Production of Center–Periphery Figurations in Statebuilding

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 190-206
Author(s):  
Thorsten Bonacker
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Internal Colonialism ◽  
Specific Population ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
Center Periphery

In this article, I examine the role security plays in creating a socioterritorial order in statebuilding policies. I argue that security contributes to the creation of center–periphery asymmetries, for example, through the portrayal of the center as threatened by a dangerous periphery or the periphery as disloyal and untrustworthy. In particular, I explore how security practices work in two distinct center–periphery figurations: in internal colonization, where a specific population, located within a dominant power, is subordinated; and in international intervention, where a society is internationally ruled. The article incorporates the literature on internal colonialism and international intervention from a critical security studies perspective to show how security functions as a mode of governing by creating specific center–periphery figurations in statebuilding. The overall aim is to provide a new theoretical perspective by intertwining critical security and postcolonial studies and to stimulate empirical research on the function of security as a principle of socioterritorial ordering.

Resilience and (in)security: Practices, subjects, temporalities

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myriam Dunn Cavelty ◽  
Mareile Kaufmann ◽  
Kristian Søby Kristensen
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Security Policies ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Security Practices

Diverse, sometimes even contradictory concepts and practices of resilience have proliferated into a wide range of security policies. In introducing this special issue, we problematize and critically discuss how these forms of resilience change environments, create subjects, link temporalities, and redefine relations of security and insecurity. We show the increased attention – scholarly as well as political – given to resilience in recent times and provide a review of the state of critical security studies literature on resilience. We argue that to advance this discussion, resilience needs to be conceptualized and investigated in plural terms. We use temporalities and subjectivities as key analytical aspects to investigate the plural instantiations of resilience in actual political practice. These two issues – subjectivity and temporality – form the overall context for the special issue and are core themes for all the articles collected here.

scholarly journals Security Traps and Discourses of Radicalization: Examining Surveillance Practices Targeting Muslims in Canada

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Monaghan
Keyword(s):  
Working Group ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
The U.S

Security agencies in Canada have become increasingly anxious regarding the threat of domestic radicalization. Defined loosely as “the process of moving from moderate beliefs to extremist belief,” inter-agency security practices aim to categorize and surveil populations deemed at-risk of radicalization in Canada, particularly young Muslims. To detail surveillance efforts against domestic radicalization, this article uses the Access to Information Act (ATIA) to detail the work of Canada’s inter-agency Combating Violent Extremism Working Group (CVEWG). As a network of security governance actors across Canada, the CVEWG is comprised of almost 20 departments and agencies with broad areas of expertise (intelligence, defence, policing, border security, transportation, immigration, etc.). Contributing to critical security studies and scholarship on the sociology of surveillance, this article maps the contours and activities of the CVEWG and uses the ATIA to narrate the production and iteration of radicalization threats through Canadian security governance networks. Tracing the influence of other states – the U.S. and U.K., in particular – the article highlights how surveillance practices that target radicalization are disembedded from particular contexts and, instead, framed around abstractions of menacing Islam. By way of conclusion, it casts aspersions on the expansion of counter-terrorism resources towards combating violent extremism; raising questions about the dubious categories and motives in contemporary practices of the “war on terror.” 

Simulating, marketing, and playing war: US–Jordanian military collaboration and the politics of commercial security

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 431-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Schuetze
Keyword(s):  
Department Of Defense ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Leadership Programs ◽  
Corporate Leadership ◽  
Private Business ◽  
Special Forces ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
The Us

The King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center (KASOTC) was financed and established by the US Department of Defense, is operated by a US private business, and is owned by the Jordanian army. It not only offers a base for the training of international Special Forces and Jordanian border guards, but also for military adventure holidays, corporate leadership programs, and stunt training for actors. This article provides an analysis of the processes and technologies involved in US–Jordanian military collaboration by investigating some of the ways in which war is simulated, marketed, and played at KASOTC. Particular focus is paid to the stark biopolitical judgments about the different worth of human subjects and their role in intersecting processes of militarization and commercialization. The article argues that US–Jordanian military collaboration at KASOTC is marked by the simultaneous blurring and reinforcement of boundaries, as commercial security is moralized and imagined moral hierarchies marketized. While war at KASOTC is an interactive and consumable event for some, it engenders deadly realities for others. The article is an empirically-grounded contribution to critical security studies based on interviews and observations made during a visit to KASOTC in early 2013.

scholarly journals Security in transition(s): The low-level security politics of electric vehicle range anxiety

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 547-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Kester
Keyword(s):  
Electric Vehicle ◽  
Electric Vehicles ◽  
Consumer Goods ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
Range Anxiety ◽  
Novel Algorithm

By drawing on critical security studies in the context of a sociotechnical transition, this article calls for more attention to the presence and sometimes alternative use of mostly unobserved security practices in the materialization of everyday consumer goods and services. This call is illustrated through a discussion of the phenomenon of range anxiety and the intra-action between drivers of electric vehicles (EVs), designers, and algorithms that observe, estimate and nudge the remaining range of an EV. Inspired by Foucault and Barad, the range-anxiety discussion offers four alternative security insights. First, it supports an argument to include stress as an embodied instance of insecurity. Second, it draws attention to a security apparatus that is based on a constantly expanding assemblage around range estimates. Third, it shows how this apparatus rests on a novel algorithm that has a continuous instead of a binary output and is governed by a distributed sovereignty: where the driver simultaneously is the object of measurement, subject of governance for more efficient driving and the ultimate sovereign who decides on the trip. Lastly, the discussion highlights how range estimates not only mediate the materialization of EVs and their automobility but also (re)perform epistemological or ontological forms of uncertainty.

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