Copenhagen School: Revisions Petr Ocelík ESSn4007 / MEBn4001 10th December 2020 Outline • Securitization: assumptions • Internal inconsistencies(Balzacq 2005): • speech act vs. pragmatist act • speaker-audiencerelationship • External insufficiencies(Stritzel 2007): • discursive context • threat-texts • power positions: embeddedagency • Scientific (expert) knowledgeand security dynamics (Berling 2011) Security as a social construct • There is no “essence”, no universal feature of security. • But: according to CS follows logic of survival (Ciuta 2009) • Security is socially constructed and intersubjectivelyshared. • Security is a self-referential practice: an issue becomes a security issue only by being labeled (via appellative act) as one. → Focus on discursive construction of security issues. Securitization • Framing • standard (depoliticized) • politicized • securitized • Securitizationactors: ones that declare– via illocutionaryspeech act – existential threattowards a particular referentobject. • Functionalactors: ones that significantlyaffect the dynamic of the security environment (sector). • Audience acceptance • Exceptional measures • Linkages Speech acts • Constative act: the literal meaning of the utterance. • Appellative act: the social function of the utterance, for what purpose it is used in a given context. • Performative act: the effect of the utterance in a given context. “I warn you, the oil is running out!” • Constative act: made vocal sounds, said that with a Czech accent. • Appellative act: making a warning about (an existential) threat. • Performative act: made you (audience) feel insecure (or amused). Facilitating (felicity) conditions 1. The speech act is following the grammar of security (i.e.: existential threat to referent object requires emergency measures) 2. The relationshipbetween speaker and audience (i.e.: the speaker has a privileged/authoritative position in relation the audience) 3. Features of the alleged threats that either facilitate or impede securitization (i.e.: information about the alleged threat outside of the speech act) Buzan et al. 1998 in Stritzel 2007: 364 Balzacq’s revision • Distinguishes between brute and institutional threats. • Institutional threats: depend on social construction/ intersubjectivity • Brute threats: do not depend on social construction(natural catastrophes) • Reduction of speech acts to appellative acts is misleading. → does not allow interaction with the audience (performative effects) • Solution: broader concept of a pragmatic act • strategic use of language centered at a specific audience • cultural embeddedness (“clues from ‘the real world’”) Balzacq’s revision: pragmatic act The processes of securitization – a pragmatic act – consist of: 1. A relatively stable system of discursive resources (metaphors, images, stereotypes, etc.), 2. mobilized by an agent (securitization actor), who 3. strategically targets the audience to build 4. a coherentnetwork of implications that convene with actor’s actions, by 5. portraying the referent subject (entity that threatens) in a way that 6. a customized political act must be taken to block its development 7. within a specific social and space-time context Balzacq’s revision: situated interactive activity • The speaker and the audience need to engage in responsive activity → the speech act is just “a blueprint” based on which audience flesh out missing meanings/details. • Thus, the speaker’s argument has to employ terms that resonate with understandings (by speeches, gestures, images, etc.) of audience. • → relation to external reality (external to securitization process) • The success of securitization is here given by mutual (intersubjective) understanding and the speaker’s ability to identify audience’s feelings, needs and interests. Balzacq’s revision: situated interactive activity Stritzel’s revision • Distinguishes between internalist and externalist position (compare with Balzacq 2005). • Internalist position: speech acts are capable to transform understanding of a certain issue (if the felicity conditions are fulfilled): “By saying the words, something is done.” (Buzan et al. 1997: 26) • Externalist position: securitization is a process – not just a particular speech act - that takes place in concrete socio-temporal context. • Broader discursive environment • Production of “threat-texts” • Power positions (field) Stritzel’s revision Discursive context / embeddedness • The speech acts and texts (“threat-texts”) are embedded within a network of constitutive rules and narratives that surround them. (Stritzel 2006: 369) • The (security-related) meanings do not come “out of nowhere” or just from securitization actors’ heads. → involved actors/audiences need to understand a speech act (or a threat-text) • Actors exploit discursive contexts as stocks of ideas, images, analogies, metaphors or – historical/cultural traumas (Sztompka2000). Historical/cultural trauma (Sztompka 2000) Stritzel’s revision “Threat-texts” (Stritzel 2007) • In contrast to exceptional speech acts, threat-texts evolve over longer periods of time and have performative force that shapes discourse as well as (consequently) power-relations. • Again, “fit” of the threat-text with the existing discourse (its resonance) is crucial for its influence. • → localization (Stritzel 2011): re-interpretation of a threat-text in a particular context where it meets a new (local) audience. • Thus: what counts as a security practice in one period or locale, does not necessarily count in the same way in other periods/locales (ibid.). Threat-texts Stritzel’s revision Power positions: embedded agency • Agency is embedded sociopolitical context where actors occupy different power positions defined by access to cultural (knowledge), moral (legitimacy), and formal (capability to make decisions) resources. • → There is an unevendistribution of opportunities and constraints to the actors. • → This embeddedness poses objective (in sense actor-independent) limitations (objective context according to Balzacq) to securitization moves. Power positions: embedded agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations Scientific (expert) knowledge production • science influences what can be said and what not: • the non-politicized has no language; it is what we know without knowing that we know it (Berling 2011: 391) • scientific or expert knowledge: a privileged form (Berling 2011) • legitimation • mobilization • objectification Non-knowledge:“consciousorunconscious, concreteor theoretical,itcan signify willful ignoranceoran inability-to-know.” (Beck 2009:123) Conclusions • Internal inconsistencies: • speech act vs. intersubjectivity (securitization actor – audience) • what is the position of securitization theory within the whole framework?(Eclecticism of the CopenhagenSchool) • External insufficiencies: • is contextualunderstandingof securitization necessary? • is there added value of the introducedconceptsin comparison to facilitating conditions? • Scientific knowledgeis not neutral and influences security dynamics • Your thoughts? What to do with the CS? How does this influence our understatingof security?