Matrix comments by Lene Hansen

In my talk for the RA135 class, I argued in favor of revising the Matrix to make it more poststructuralist and discursive. I held that the Matrix appears to be based on an objective assessment of threats, but that it would benefit from taking a turn towards a discursive conceptualization. The distinction between an objective and a subjective conceptualization of security goes back to Arnold Wolfer’s classical article “National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol” and it points to the importance of threats to acquired values, but also to (subjective) fears that such values be attacked. The importance of subjective elements has been theorized using the concepts of beliefs and perceptions, yet these perspectives keep in place an objective conceptualization insofar as they see the subjective as interfering with or distorting an objective assessment. Hence for instance the concern with ‘misperceptions’.

Discursive conceptualizations break with the objective-subjective distinction by arguing that there is no objective definition of (in)security, but rather that ‘security’ should be understood as a speech act. Using ‘security’ is, in the words of Ole Wæver and the Copenhagen School, to securitize an issue, that is, to construct it as being of such importance to ‘our’ survival that radical measures are called for. ‘Security’ thus refers to the political modality of threat and dangers, not to an objective level of threats. A discursive conception of security differs from a subjective one, in that it does not see ‘words of security’ as (mis)perceptions interfering with what is objectively security. It is a social and a political conception of security, in that it points to how security is constituted in language, and how securitizing actors articulate threats and dangers in the attempt to have these accepted by their relevant audiences.

Coming from a Poststructuralist perspective, I would be in favor of pushing the speech act approach of the Copenhagen School in a more Foucaultian direction. I would argue that in addition to seeing security as the construction of a particular political logic, it should be noted that constructions of threat always imply the delineation of Self/Selves and Other(s). To argue that something or someone is threatening is to constitute a ‘who’, who is threatened, and to constitute a set of subjects who are part of forming – or countering – this threat. This implies that the construction of political subjects (naming the relevant subjects and deciding on their identity) is indeed as, if not more, important than whether there is a threat or not. Thus the question isn’t whether ‘terrorism’ is a threat or not, but how the ‘terrorist subject’ is formed, how certain activities are defined as ‘terrorist’, and what the use of the ‘terrorist’ terms does to provide ‘Us’ with the rights to fight ‘terrorism’.

The consequences of taking a discursive approach to The Matrix would be at least two-fold. First, it would imply asking what important securitizing actors (at national, regional and global levels) constitute as threats (one should note that securitizing actors might usually be top-politicians or international institutions, such as NATO or the European Union. Securitizing actors are in other words often individuals. This however is not to say there is an individual concept of security, since what securitizing actors securitize is in most cases threats to national, global, or regional security. Individuals are rarely referent objects of security.) Second, it would also involve analyzing what Others and Selves (what political subjects) are constructed in discourses of threat and insecurity. This in turn would call for more work on the relationship between ‘the human’ and ‘the state’, including how non-state subjectivities as collectivities rather than atomistic ‘humans’ could be drawn in.

Lene Hansen, University of Copenhagen

Posted by Lene Hansen on December 11, 2006 12:35 PM | Permalink

Extended Critique--Continued from First Entry

One question I asked the Professor during her talk was whether the discursive approach can be considered prescriptive on a broad range of issues. Given that discourse is vague in and of itself, approaches to interpretation open to widespread debate, and no empirical means to prove causation between the framing of a conflict and action taken to deal with it, I was very skeptical about directly applying the discursive method to specific policy analysis. Professor Hansen gave few concrete details, pointing to the highly complex nature of the approach and its need for greater academic acceptance. Nevertheless, her opposition to the perception of new European immigrants as "the other" and her belief in the accountability of individual policymakers provided a few hints to the affirmative.
Despite the case for the discursive approach and the possibilities it opens, I need to absorb myself in more literature to truly accept its viability to the gamut of foreign policy decisions. I still cling to a view of the international system as existing in an objective state of anarchy with clearly identifiable state and non-state actors responding to acknowledged security threats, both conventional and asymmetrical. I believe Professor Hansen's approach, such as the emphasis on the threat posed by InfoWar and to the individual human (though acknowledging humans in and of themselves are not securitizing actors but part of a collective, with a state being a key element in securitization) is very difficult to fully ascertain and hampers effective policymaking. Resource conflicts, which encourage regional destabilization, inter-state competition, and mass migration, are of far greater danger to global security and international stability than the shaping of news and commentary from the media. One can make the argument that how the media and leaders securitizing issues in policy discourse shape issues hints at possible responses, but due a lack of pattern and causality between these two elements makes focusing on them dubious at best. President Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman made sweeping mentions of democracy, freedom, and the preservation of liberty in their official policy discourse in shaping America's response to the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War. While the discourse was similar, the policies undertaken were quite different, with total way aimed at unconditional surrender advanced in the former and containment to preserve spheres of influence in the latter. Using the rhetoric of preserving freedom and democracy has become so commonplace in the West that connection to policy action is very difficult to determine. In the environment of the Cold War, whether the threat posed to American or Soviet interests was officially labeled as one of undermining self-determination and freedom or a matter of state security, the responses were often similar and in line with the accepted international reality.

Posted by Boris Ryvkin on November 14, 2006 02:06 PM | Permalink

Critique of Professor Hansen's Ranking

Professor Hansen gave a highly informative and revealing guest lecture about the discursive approach to International Relations. Applying the post-structural approach to conflicts ranging from the Balkan Wars of the 1990s to the current European schism stemming from an increasing immigration wave, Hansen sought to understand how conflicts are shaped in official discourse. Specifically, she aimed to determine how policy decisions are securitized and based around the need to protect certain tangible and intangible revered objects. In the case of the Balkan conflict, whether the official perception was one of a regional war in need of containment and threatening state sovereignty or a campaign of genocide perpetrated against select ethnic minorities led to very different proposals for action.

Posted by Boris Ryvkin on November 14, 2006 01:29 PM | Permalink

My Interpretation and Critique of Lene Hansen’s Threat Assessment

Professor Lene Hansen from the University of Copenhagen guest lectured recently at both professor Der Derian’s IR135 class and at the Watson Institute. Professor Hansen’s approach to issues in international relations and the Global Security Matrix was that of the discursive approach. Hansen focused more on the question of “how is security constructed in discourse?” and how actors shape that security. Her guest lecture at the IR135 class focused on two main areas. The first being security as seen through the discursive approach (along with an explanation of what is the discursive approach) and then an interpretation and critique of the Global Security Matrix utilizing that approach. She interpreted the security matrix while taking into consideration the true key players at the different levels of global security matrix and how would they interpret the specific category. This basically meant that Hansen looked beyond structure and took into consideration the actions of individuals such as the leader of a state when assessing a security threat. In her opinion, individuals such as leaders must be held accountable for their actions, because their decisions directly affect other variables such as state action.
Utilizing the Global Security Matrix in a discursive manner, Hansen provided a few guides lines and concerns. Firstly, she stated that one must consider what threats are constructed by important actors. This is because those filling out the matrix are not always (nor usually) the same individuals that make the decisions in the real world. Secondly, she expressed the point of having the matrix go beyond simply empirical mapping. To address this point, I believe that an answer to that concern is the blog used to comment on the various assessments of the matrix and critique security along with other issues that concern the Global Security Matrix project. Another point argued by Hansen is the role of identity construction and how that shapes how a “threat” is interpreted. To explain this concept, Hansen brought up the point of terrorism and how its identity has been constructed to result in terror rather than as other actions that have been constructed to signify acts of war, or simply as accidents. If 9/11 were to be seen as simply an accident it would have been unlikely that people’s reactions would have been the same, or that President Bush would have begun a “war on terror” in retaliation. For Hansen identity and how it is constructed is so important that she argues that it is more permanent than the actual threat itself. Further critique of the matrix by Hansen yielded another point that argued for the addition of more securitizing agents to the matrix. She also criticized the “human” or individual category by arguing that individuals are not securitizing actors in themselves because they are always a part of a greater collective. As a result, she points out that the Matrix needs more work on human in relation to states are connected and their connection to the Global level. A few of the higher threats identified by Hansen were Infowar. The highest threat for this was marked for the system, state, and global levels. Pandemics, States at Risk, and War were seen by Hansen to be very relevant threats at the human level. This assessment may seem odd considering her focus on the fact that individuals are not securitizing actors, but her assessment was probably made with the assumption that they are a part of a greater collective that might, as a result of collectivity, some general views on these issues, but it is not clear considering she did not have time to explain her choices in lecture. Her assessment of the relevance of Infowar is clearer in that it is definitely an identity constructing agent that shapes system, state, and global conceptions of what we see and do not see as threats today. States at risk and terrorism/crime were both given high marks by Hansen at the system and network level in addition to environment, which covered all actors with high marks except networks. The explanation for these high marks from the discursive perspective have yet to be seen in the Global Security Matrix blog as of 11/10/06 when this entry was made.

Posted by Ivan Maldonado on November 10, 2006 06:51 PM | Permalink