Understanding global security - Peter Hough

SOCIAL IDENTITY AS A THREAT TO SECURITY
I love my country far too much to be a nationalist
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Societal security
Undoubtedly the most influential idea to emerge from the conceptual widening of
Security Studies in the 1990s by the Copenhagen School was that of societal security.
This concept seeks to encapsulate the fact that the process of securitizing issues
could sometimes be witnessed when what is thought to be being threatened is neither
the state nor individuals within it, but a particular kind of society. ‘Societal security
concerns the ability of a society to persist in its essential character under changing
conditions and possible or actual threats’ (Waever et al. 1993: 23). This security
is threatened when ‘societies perceive a threat in identity terms’ (ibid). Hence the
heightened political prominence given to the issue of immigration in many Western
European countries in the 1990s could be construed as a securitizing of that issue,
by nationals fearful of threats to their traditional values and customs.
In many ways the 1990s did witness a resurgence in violent nationalism in the
form of groups inspired by the self-preservation of their socially constructed nation
(as opposed to the ‘nationalism’ of states pursuing self-advancing foreign policies).
From the rise of far-right political parties and racist attacks in wealthy cosmopolitan
democracies like France, Germany and Austria through to outright ethnic conflict
in states beginning to embrace democracy like Yugoslavia, Moldova and Romania,
Europe appeared to be awakening old spectres. This, added to earlier revivals in
radical regionalism in Europe (such as Basque and Corsican separatist violence)
and anti-western nationalism in some Islamic states, appeared to represent a new
essentially societally driven dimension of security politics.
In line with the other threats to security considered in this book, however, this
chapter will focus on the existential security of individuals rather than considering
how societies can be threatened. Issues such as the abandonment of a state currency
in favour of monetary union with neighbouring countries or the cultural dominance
of foreign films and food outlets may threaten many people’s notion of their societies
but they are not, in themselves, life threatening. Globalization and integration are
very important political topics in many ways and have framed the context of many
security issues but they represent a separate dimension of the study of International
Relations. Although this study favours a broad approach to the subject, security
becomes too diluted a concept if cultural change is accommodated alongside matters
of life and death. In addition, on an ontological level, social constructs make very
awkward referent objects on which to base analysis. McSweeney makes this point in
challenging the approach of the Copenhagen School. Societies, by definition, evolve
and individual identities change with them, making any enquiry into challenges to
identity problematic (McSweeney 1996). There may even be practical dangers
inherent in this approach since the arbiters of what is society and who is threatening
it will be likely to be those with the loudest voices in the ‘speech act’ of securitization.
Frequently such people will be ultra-nationalist elites seeking to justify the exclusion
of minority ‘others’. ‘Despite his liberal sensibilities, Buzan’s conceptualization of
security provides him with no theoretical grounds for disputing, say, Radovan
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