Understanding global security - Peter Hough

SOCIAL IDENTITY AS A THREAT TO SECURITY
tendency for Moslems in Europe and North America to be specifically targeted, above
minorities in general, in attacks by militant nationalists.
Although many ‘religious conflicts’ are best understood as nationalist rather
than theological struggles, religious issues can sometimes serve to enflame essentially
national conflicts. Serb nationalist atrocities perpetrated on the Kosovar
Albanians in the 1990s, unlike similar actions against the Bosnian Moslems, were
partially explained by the sacred significance of Kosovo to the Serbian Orthodox
Church (who, themselves, were active in promoting Serb nationalism in the region
leading up to Milosevic’s campaign). Similarly, the Palestinian–Israeli dispute
is especially complicated by the religious importance attached to Jerusalem by both
sides (and indeed by Christianity), particularly with regard to the Temple Mount. 2
Hindu–Moslem and Hindu–Sikh tensions in India have periodically worsened
following incidents relating to Mosques and temples, respectively. The Tamil secessionist
campaign in Sri Lanka, too, has come to have a much greater religious
dimension since their 1998 attack on The Temple of the Buddha’s Tooth.
Table 5.2 illustrates the range of recent violent clashes involving both governments
and societal groups which are overtly religious in character. For convenience
sake, atheistic Communism is included as a ‘religion’ since much religious violence
occurs vis-a-vis this ideology.
The Societal Security approach, characterized by Buzan and Waever, has focused
almost exclusively on national and religious identity. A further form of social identity
which is frequently the basis of life-threatening discrimination, but which is
not addressed by the Copenhagen School, is gender. Hansen, in a seminal article,
highlights the ‘striking absence of gender’ (Hansen 2000: 286) in the Copenhagen
School approach. This oversight arises, she contends, because the Copenhagen
School’s ‘epistemological reliance on speech act theory presupposes the existence
of a situation in which speech is indeed possible’ (Hansen 2000: 285). Hansen uses
Copenhagen’s little mermaid statue (who in the story from which it is derived is
silent) as an analogy, to make the point that much organized and ritualized violence
against women is excluded by the societal security approach since the victims are less
able to ‘securitize’ the threat than religious or national minorities.
In illustration of this critique Hansen uses the issue of ‘honour killings’ in
Pakistan, where women are often killed for having committed adultery. Men too, in
theory, are subject to the death penalty for this crime but, in practice, are able to
escape punishment or make a deal to save their lives. Pakistani women, as a collective
entity, are not being threatened but individual Pakistani women are subject to threat
because of their gender. In addition, the pervading threat hanging over Pakistani
women as a collective serves to deter them from voicing their fears and so highlighting
their plight. A very different sort of security dilemma emerges for individuals
who, far from being able to securitize their concerns, may actually increase their
insecurities in doing so. Human security issues pertaining to women, such as ‘honour
killings’, have little chance of receiving attention in the traditional statist paradigm
of International Relations since women tend to suffer double discrimination. Women’s
Gender
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