Abstract
In an era defined by insecurity, uncertainty, and increasing anxieties, ontological security has proven to be a fruitful lens for analyzing world politics. This Special Issue joins other recent compilations, contributing to the growing research agenda on ontological security and insecurity in world politics. The articles herein conceptualize and apply ontological security at the international, transnational, and state levels, oriented around the broad themes of conflict and community. Behravesh and Greve draw on ontological security to shed critical light on the well-established IR concepts of revisionist states and security communities. Ejdus focuses attention on critical situations and eruptions of ontological insecurity at the collective level. Krolikowski and Solomon home in on the individual, examining how the state and how transnational affective currents play roles in ontological (in)security. Stepping back and reflecting on the range of insights from these diverse contributions, a powerful unifying theme emerges, namely, the sense that the search for ontological security can never be fulfilled but is a constant quest for something that will always, at every level, from the personal to the world political, remain out of reach: the complete, whole Self.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
References
Adler, Emanuel, and Michael Barnett (eds.). 1998. Security Communities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Aggestam, Karin. 2014. Conflict Analysis and International Relations. In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Political Psychology, ed. Paul Nesbitt-Larking, Tereza Capelos, Catarina Kinnvall, and Henk Dekker, 164–182. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillann.
Agius, Christine. 2017. Ordering Without Bordering: Drones, The Unbordering of Late Modern Warfare and Ontological Insecurity. Postcolonial Studies 20 (3): 370–386.
Agius, Christine, and Dean Keep (eds.). 2017. The Politics of Identity: Place. Space and Discourse. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bar-Tal, Daniel. 2007. Sociopsychological Foundations of Intractable Conflict. American Behavioral Scientist 50 (11): 1430–1453.
Berenskoetter, Felix. 2007. Friends, There are No Friends? An Intimate Reframing of the International. Millennium 35 (3): 647–676.
Berenskoetter, Felix, and Bastian Giegerich. 2010. From NATO to ESDP: A Social Constructivist Analysis of German Strategic Adjustment after the End of the Cold War. Security Studies 19 (3): 407–452.
Bigo, Didier. 2006. Globalized (in)security: the field and the ban-opticon. In Translation, Biopolitics, Colonial Difference, ed. N. Saka and J. Solomon, 109–115. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Browning, Christopher and Pertii Joenniemi. 2013. From Fratricide to Security Community: Re-theorising Difference in the Constitution of Nordic Peace. Journal of International Relations and Development 16: 483–513.
Buzan, Barry, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde. 1998. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Cash, John, and Catarina Kinnvall. 2017. Postcolonial Bordering and Ontological Insecurities. Postcolonial Studies 20 (3): 267–274.
Chernobrov, Dmitry. 2016. ‘Ontological Security and Public (Mis)Recognition of International Crises: Uncertainty, Political Imagining, and the Self ‘. Political Psychology 37 (5): 581–596.
Combes, deRaismes. 2017. Encountering the Stranger: Ontological Security and the Boston Marathon Bombing. Cooperation and Conflict 52 (1): 126–143.
Croft, Stuart. 2012. Securitizing Islam: Identity and the Search for Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Croft, Stuart, and Nick Vaughan-Williams. 2017. Fit for Purpose? Fitting Ontological Security Studies ‘into’ the Discipline of International Relations: Towards a Vernacular Turn. Cooperation and Conflict 52 (1): 12–30.
Deutsch, Karl, W., et al. 1957. Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dupuis, Ann and David C. Thorns. 1998. Home, Home Ownership and the Search for Ontological Security. Sociological Review 46 (1): 24–47.
Edenborg, Emil. 2017. Politics of Visibility and Belonging: From Russia’s “Homosexual Propaganda” Laws to the Ukraine War. London: Routledge.
Ejdus, Filip. 2017. Not a Heap of Stones’: Material Environments and Ontological Security in International Relations. Cambridge Review of International Affairs. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2016.1271310.
Elliot, Anthony. 2016. Identity Troubles: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge.
Epstein, Charlotte. 2011. Who Speaks? Discourse, the Subject, and the Study of Identity in International Politics. European Journal of International Relations 17 (2): 327–350.
Fraser, Nancy, and Axel Honneth. 2003. Redistribution or Recognition?: A Political-Philosophical Exchange. London: Verso.
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Huysmans, Jef. 2006. The Politics of Insecurity: Fear, migration and asylum in the EU. London: Routledge.
Kay, Sean. 2012. Ontological Security and Peace-Building in Northern Ireland. Contemporary Security Policy 33 (2): 236–263.
Kinnvall, Catarina. 2004. Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the Search for Ontological Security. Political Psychology 25 (4): 741–767.
Kinnvall, Catarina. 2006. Globalization and Religious Nationalism in India: The Search for Ontological Security. London: Routledge.
Kinnvall, Catarina. 2012. European Trauma: Governance and the Psychological Moment. Alternatives 27 (3): 266–281.
Kinnvall, Catarina. 2016. The Postcolonial Has moved into Europe: Bordering, Security and Ethno-Cultural Belonging. Journal of Common Market Studies 54 (1): 152–168.
Kinnvall, Catarina, and Jennifer Mitzen. 2017. An Introduction to the Special Issue: Ontological Securities in World Politics. Special Issue of Cooperation and Conflict 52 (1): 3–11.
Krolikowski, Alanna. 2008. State Personhood in Ontological Security Theories of International Relations and Chinese Nationalism: A Sceptical View. Chinese Journal of International Politics 2 (1): 109–133.
Laing, R.D. 1960. The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. London: Penguin.
Lupovici, Amir. 2012. ‘Ontological Dissonance, Clashing Identities, and Israel’s Unilateral Steps Towards the Palestinians. Review of International Studies 38 (4): 809–833.
Markell, Patchen. 2003. Bound by Recognition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mitzen, Jennifer. 2006a. Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma. European Journal of International Relations 12 (3): 341–370.
Mitzen, Jennifer. 2006b. Anchoring Europe’s Civilizing Identity: Habits, Capabilities, and Ontological Security. Journal of European Public Policy 13 (2): 270–285.
Mitzen, Jennifer. 2016. Security Communities and the Unthinkabilities of War. Annual Review of Political Science 19 (1): 229–248.
Mitzen, Jennifer. 2018. Feeling at Home in Europe: Migration, Ontological Security, and the Political Psychology of EU Bordering. unpublished manuscript.
Mitzen, Jennifer and Randall Schweller. 2011. Knowing the Unknown Unknowns: Misplaced Certainty and the Onset of War. Security Studies 20 (1): 2–35.
Mälksoo, Maria. 2015. Memory Must be Defended: Beyond the Politics of Mnemonical Security. Security Dialogue 46 (3): 221–247.
Roe, Paul. 2014. Gender and ‘Positive’ Security. International Relations 28 (1): 116–138.
Roe, Paul. 2008. The Value of Positive Security. Review of International Studies 34 (4): 777–795.
Rossdale, Chris. 2015. Enclosing Critique: The Limits of Ontological Security. International Political Sociology 9: 369–386.
Rumford, Chris. 2008. Cosmopolitan Spaces: Europe, Globalization, Theory. London: Routledge.
Rumelili, Bahar. 2015a. Conflict Resolution and Ontological Security: Peace, Anxietites ed. London: Routledge.
Rumelili, Bahar. 2015b. Identity and De-securitization: The Pitfalls of Conflating Ontological and Physical Security. Journal of International Relations and Development 18: 52–74.
Skey, Michael. 2010. ‘A Sense of Where You Belong in the World’: National Belonging, Ontological Security and the Status of the Ethnic Majority in England. Nations and Nationalism 16 (4): 715–733.
Solomon, Ty. 2012. ‘I Wasn’t Angry, Because I couldn’t Believe it was Happening:’ Affect and Discourse in Responses to 9/11. Review of International Studies 38 (4): 907–928.
Solomon, Ty. 2015. The Politics of Subjectivity in American Foreign Policy Discourses. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Staub, Ervin. 2005. The Origins and Evolution of Hate, with Notes on Prevention. In The Psychology of Hate, ed. R.J. Sternberg, 51–67. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Steele, Brent J. 2005. Ontological Security and the Power of Self-identity: British Neutrality and the American Civil War. Review of International Studies 31: 519–540.
Steele, Brent J. 2008. Ontological Security in International Relations. New York: Routledge.
Steele, Brent. 2017. Organizational Processes and Ontological (In)Security: Torture, the CIA and the United States. Cooperation and Conflict 52 (1): 69–89.
Subotić, Jelena. 2016. Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change. Foreign Policy Analysis 12 (4): 610–627.
van Houtum, Henk. 2005. The Geopolitics of Borders and Boundaries. Geopolitics 10: 672–679.
Vaughan-Williams, Nick. 2015. Europe’s Border Crisis: Biopolitical Security and Beyond. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Zarakol, Ayse. 2010. Ontological (In)Security and State Denial of Historical Crimes: Turkey and Japan. International Relations 24 (3): 3–23.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kinnvall, C., Mitzen, J. Ontological security and conflict: the dynamics of crisis and the constitution of community. J Int Relat Dev 21, 825–835 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-018-0161-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-018-0161-1