Security Dialogue
42(4-5) 385­–397
© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0967010611418714
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Special issue onThe Politics of Securitization
418714 424-510.1177/0967010611418714Villumsen Berling: Science and securitizationSecurity Dialogue
Corresponding author:
TrineVillumsen Berling
Email: tv@ifs.ku.dk
Science and securitization:
Objectivation, the authority of
the speaker and mobilization
of scientific facts
TrineVillumsen Berling
Centre for Advanced Security Theory, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
The interface between science and securitization has not been systematically addressed.This article argues
from a Bourdieusian viewpoint that scientific arguments and ‘facts’ are at work in at least three distinct
mechanisms within and around securitization. First, science communities/explanations can come to objectify
an issue to the extent where securitization – and even politicization – becomes next to impossible. Second,
science co-determines the status of a securitizing actor and thus influences the authority of the speaker in
specific fields.Third,scientific facts can be mobilized in securitization claims by securitizing actors in attempts
to seek back-up in the objective, disinterested aura of the scientific vocation. The RAND Corporation’s
objectivation of the issue of nuclear deterrence is taken as an example of the first mechanism, while
climate change and democratic peace illustrate the other two mechanisms.The article questions whether
securitization theory has adequately addressed the issue of context, points to a new research agenda and
carves out practical reflexivity for security experts.
Keywords
science studies, securitization, Pierre Bourdieu, theory/practice, practical reflexivity
Introduction
With the formulation of what has come to be known as securitization theory, doing security science
has become a dangerous endeavour. Using the word ‘security’ may bring about what one is trying
to avoid, as Huysmans (2002a) once argued. But, how to think more systematically about the relation
between science and securitization? In this article, I take a sociological point of view on securitization
processes and argue that ‘science’ is at work in at least three distinct mechanisms of
relevance for securitization theory. First, scientific communities/explanations can come to objectify
an issue to the extent where securitization – and even politicization – becomes next to
386		 Security Dialogue 42(4-5)
impossible. Second, science co-determines the status of a securitizing actor and thus influences the
authority of the speaker in specific fields. Third, scientific facts can be mobilized in securitization
claims by both experts and other political actors in attempts to seek back-up in the objective, disinterested
aura of the scientific vocation. Examples from contemporary security illustrate the
points made.
By focusing on the interface between securitization and science, the article zooms in on the
issue of science in society and the impact of science on politics or societal processes – outside of
the field of science. The article therefore focuses primarily on how the political process of securitization
is influenced – or even altered – when a science dimension is taken into account.1
The argument presented proceeds in three sections. The first section starts with a discussion of
possible sites of science mechanisms in securitization theory. It is argued that one internal and two
external mechanisms might be at play. Before proceeding to flesh these out, the section reviews
four attempts to bring science and securitization together in the international relations literature
and concludes that further investigation can fruitfully be pursued through a reading of Pierre
Bourdieu, because of his twin focus on contextual and agential factors. The second section of the
article turns to sociology of science discussions about the nature of science and the relationship
between science and society. It argues that even though differences exist, social and natural science
share important features – not least when viewed from the perspective of how science functions in
the political domain. The section then draws in three important insights from Pierre Bourdieu: that
science objectifies its object of study; that it can co-determine the authority of the speaker in specific
fields; and that scientific products can be mobilized strategically by agents. Through these
insights, science materializes as three distinct mechanisms within and against securitization. These
are illustrated by examples from climate change, the democratic peace thesis and the RAND
Corporation’s objectivation of nuclear deterrence.2
The article’s conclusion stresses that the study
of science in the specific political process constituted by securitization not only directs attention to
a phenomenon largely overlooked in securitization studies, but also points to possible points of
development for the theory of securitization as such. Centrally, an exclusively internal reading of
securitization as a speech act does not capture the issue of science. This brings to the fore the
underdeveloped issue of the context of securitizations, while at the same time retaining an explicit
focus on the grammar of securitization and the means by which agents seek success.
Securitization and science
This article focuses explicitly on a discussion of securitization and science, and not security and
science. As a specific issue in relation to securitization, the role of science has been studied by a
very limited number of authors. The research largely falls into four clusters: (1) a focus on natural
science facts related to diseases like HIV/AIDS, SARS and swine flu or to climate change (Brauch,
2009: 40; Trombetta, 2008); (2) a focus on how adding a focus on the scientific setting (among
other settings) can remedy the theory of securitization as it was first formulated by Buzan et al. in
1998 (Salter, 2008); (3) a focus on the production of truths by technocratic or semi-scientific agents
(experts) in relation to migration (Bigo, 2002; Huysmans, 2006); and (4) a focus on the mobilization
of social science facts – for example, the securitization of the democratic peace thesis (Büger
and Villumsen, 2007; Villumsen, 2008). These four clusters of research agree on foregrounding the
role of science/expertise but address the issue from different perspectives.
In this section, I will first give a brief summary of the securitization perspective as laid out by
Buzan et al. (1998) and will point to possible sites in the theory where a science dimension might be
at play. I then move to an overview and discussion of the four clusters of research that have addressed
Villumsen Berling: Science and securitization	 387
the link between science and securitization. I conclude that a focus on how science is perceived in
society, the status or weight of scientific arguments outside of the scientific field, and how these
arguments can impact on securitization processes has yet to be developed to the full. Especially the
status of the context within which agents strive for success in securitizing moves, as well as the
means by which they do so, needs to be specified in order to capture the science dimension.
Securitization and possible sites of science mechanisms
The term securitization3
has been specifically developed within the discipline of international relations,
and its usage does not equal the everyday usage of the term security. When the word ‘security’is
uttered and linked to a particular referent object that is threatened in relation to its existence,
‘something is done’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 26): a process is set in motion in which measures beyond
normal politics are legitimized. Security is thus a performative (illocutionary) speech act that has
a certain structure, or grammar, that links different elements to one other. Buzan et al. identify a
securitizing actor who claims that a referent object is existentially threatened and seeks acceptance
from an audience in the quest for legitimizing extraordinary measures. These features are internal
to the speech act. Certain facilitating conditions, however, strengthen or weaken securitization
attempts (Buzan et al., 1998: 35–42). These are external to the speech act. According to Stritzel
(2007), the dimensions internal/external represent two different ‘centres of gravity’ in securitization
theory: the internal concerns the speech act and its ‘social magic’ or performativity, while the
external concerns the social position of the speaker and the utterance, including facilitating conditions:
in short, the context (see Balzacq, 2005: 172).
Science can thus be sought as a mechanism in both an internal and an external dimension of
securitization theory. One might ask whether mobilizing scientific facts in the securitization grammar
can potentially increase the likelihood of acceptance of securitization attempts, or whether
certain features of science affect the authority of a speaker or an utterance. Interestingly, however,
Buzan et al. touch upon a case that might reveal a third science mechanism. They take the shared
fears of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War as an example of a case that ran into problems
concerning security legitimacy – supposedly because the referent object was too broadly defined
(Buzan et al., 1998: 36). But, could an additional reason – or science mechanism in the language
of this article – have been at work? The unsuccessful securitization of nuclear annihilation could
perhaps be found in the fact that the area of nuclear deterrence was heavily non-politicized owing
to an unprecedented degree of scientific objectivation. In Bourdieu’s terms, nuclear deterrence was
becoming doxic practice and therefore next to impossible to talk about as anything but a logic of
necessity. It was ‘what we knew without knowing that we knew it’, to paraphrase Bourdieu
(Crossley, 2004: 100). Objectivation as a third mechanism of science in relation to securitization
thus keeps an issue from being securitized in the first place, or helps desecuritize it. This resonates
with the spectrum ranging from the non-politicized over the politicized to the securitized that
underlies the argument that ‘“security” is the move that takes politics beyond the established rules
of the game and frames the issue either as a special kind of politics or as above politics’ (Buzan
et al., 1998: 23). Securitization is a more extreme version of politicization, while being nonpoliticized
means that an issue is not easily made the object of public debate or decision (Buzan
et al., 1998: 23–24) – possibly because of objectivation, one might add.4
Reading science as a set of mechanisms questions an exclusively internal reading of securitization
theory in which meaning is created in the moment of the utterance itself – irrespective of social
surroundings or patterns of domination5
– by placing the utterance in a context while retaining a
focus on the grammar of securitization. Adding an external, contextual dimension to the
388		 Security Dialogue 42(4-5)
securitization perspective is thus pivotal to understanding science in securitization processes.6
Buzan et al. (1998: 31) seem to have accepted this without giving it much theoretical attention:
‘security is … very much a structured field in which some actors are placed in positions of power
by virtue of being generally accepted voices of security, by having the power to define security’.
This could raise the question of whether the objective aura of science might be a position or source
of power in securitization processes.7
Reading the science dimension to securitization theory through Bourdieu seems particularly
relevant for at least three reasons.8
First, Bourdieu’s explicit focus on the role of science and expertise
in the constitution of the social makes his thoughts important for understanding the role of
science in society. Second, his focus on fields as the structure of social reality can provide tools that
enable us to better understand the external dimension of securitization theory: the context in which
securitizations take place. Third, his explicit focus on the role of agency and strategic manoeuvring
resonates well with the image of the securitizing actor as defined by the Copenhagen School and
makes for important insights about how agents strive to become successful agents in securitization
attempts. The Bourdieusian framework thus captures both the internal and the external science
mechanisms in securitization. Below, I review four attempts to include science in the securitization
research programme. In the subsequent section, I flesh out the three Bourdieu-inspired science
mechanisms.
Science in securitization studies
The first cluster of research on the relation between science and securitization concerns facts produced
in the natural sciences concerning issues such as disease or climate change.9
According to
several authors (e.g. Brauch, 2009), such facts have been securitized to varying degrees. However,
given a strong trend arguing for the lack of hard scientific facts about how, for example, climate
change will affect us, an important subdiscussion related to this cluster concerns the role of science
in risk management. In other words, when hard facts are absent, a range of risks need to be juggled.
In the precautionary mode of risk management, according to Aradau and Van Munster, risk management
is constructed as working against catastrophic and irreversible risks of which there is a
high degree of scientific uncertainty (Aradau and Van Munster, 2007: 103). In political practice,
however, it is argued that lack of scientific knowledge should not hinder governments from taking
action. Sovereign decisions (and not democratic deliberations) are therefore taken ‘at the limit of
knowledge’ (Aradau and Van Munster, 2007: 106–7; Oels, 2010) and may cause drastic interventions
such as shoot-to-kill policies, pre-emptive strikes and war (Aradau and Van Munster, 2007:
105). In the words of Oels (2010: 7), ‘even though science fails to deliver conclusive evidence, the
will to knowledge is becoming unlimited’(emphasis added). Science thus seems to be mobilized as
failed science, which leads to a problematic process similar to that described by securitization
theory: the instrumentalization in politics of a lack of knowledge leads to the legitimization of
undemocratic practices in the name of managing risk.
The second cluster of research includes the work of Mark Salter, who draws our attention to
how different audiences can receive (‘hear’) securitizing moves differently. Salter argues that in
the case of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), expert communities challenged
a further securitization of airport security after the initial securitization of civil aviation post
9-11 through a set of desecuritizing moves – for example, ‘a critical appraisal of the risk management
approach’ (Salter, 2008: 333). He does not, however, take a stand on how science operates
and is received in society in general, even though he argues that ‘if, as security experts, it is part of
our role to intervene in the securitization/desecuritization process, then we must gain a tactical
Villumsen Berling: Science and securitization	 389
knowledge of the conditions for success and failure’ (Salter, 2008: 343). Part of this knowledge
concerns how science is perceived in society, I would argue. Instead of pursuing this line of reasoning,
however, Salter takes the scientific arguments as they were presented by scientific agents to a
scientific audience. Interesting questions about the role of science and scientific statements in
society thus remain. How does society perceive of science? What weight does a scientific argument
carry? And, can that influence securitization processes?
The third cluster of research on securitization/science is occupied by what has come to be
known as the Paris School. This school is concerned with how experts engage in the production of
truths and thus help shape the threat environment independently of dramatic securitizations.10
According to the Paris School, the Copenhagen School only studies the tip of the iceberg by focusing
on exceptional measures. Instead, securitization is seen as a not very spectacular everyday
practice that often involves ‘experts’.11
This draws attention to the status and everyday workings of
concrete security experts and constitutes an important insight for securitization theory.
The fourth cluster of research on securitization/science concerns the mobilization of scientific
facts in political practice. In a study of the securitization of the democratic peace thesis, Christian
Büger and I (2007) showed how the scientific ‘fact’ of democratic peace was transformed into a
security policy by both the US government and the security organization NATO after the end of
bipolarity. In a more thoroughly sociological version of this point, I argue from a Bourdieusian
viewpoint that science can be understood as both a type of practice and a type of capital, with
important weight in specific fields (Villumsen, 2008).
As the above overview shows, there has been some attention to the connection between science
and securitization, but no real debate within securitization studies (or within security studies more
broadly, for that matter) has materialized. In the following, I will develop the ideas sketched above,
while keeping in mind the important insights from the contributions to the science/securitization
issue.
Science in securitization studies: Objectivation, the authority of
the speaker and mobilization of scientific facts
But, how to capture science? In the next subsection, I flesh out the Bourdieusian take on science,
but first a general discussion of science is in place. A useful distinction suggests that science can
be viewed both from within the scientific field and, for example, from political practice outside the
scientific field.12
Seen from within, science is a field in itself, with its own rules and expectations
concerning how to do science in a ‘scientific’ way. Even though differences exist between social
and natural sciences, a dominant strand of science studies generally converges on the idea that
science is a practice with its own profits and positions that are obtained within the field of science
(Latour, 1983; Bourdieu, 2004).13
Central to scientific practices is the notion of controversy: falsification
and dissent are integral to the workings of science, and the settling of controversies – or
their reopening – often results in fierce struggles (Latour, 1987). Seen from the outside, however,
natural science in particular has traditionally been viewed as producing objective, autonomous
knowledge that is disinterested and not imbued with power (Swartz, 1997: 67).14
The products –
so-called facts – of natural science have been taken as ‘black boxes’ (Latour, 1987) filled with
knowledge, and the controversies have seemed to stay in the realm of science. Changes in the
production mode of science are altering these traditional features (Gibbons et al., 1994). However,
as Ole Wæver (2011) rightly argues elsewhere in this special issue, science in general remains cast
in objectivist terms of ‘pure’or ‘tainted’when transported into the political field, irrespective of the
mode of production.
390		 Security Dialogue 42(4-5)
The autonomy of the social sciences has been taken to differ somewhat from that of natural science,
because the topics lie close to what ‘ordinary’ people feel they know something about;
‘everyone feels entitled to have their say in sociology and to enter into the struggle over the legitimate
view of the social world’ (Bourdieu, 2004: 87). Seen in the light of Giddens’ (1984: 374)
concept of ‘double hermeneutics’ and the constant ‘slippage’ between lay and expert language,15
social science is often deemed less autonomous than the natural sciences. Add to this the influence
of social constructivist theories, which hold that the social world is ‘what we make of it’ (Wendt,
1992), and social science seems less able to black-box its findings. Controversies could therefore
be expected to spill over into the political realm to a much larger extent than in the natural sciences.
However, seen from within the scientific field, social science is still a science that requires certain
skills and methods in order to be counted as science: ‘facts’ need to be manufactured in a specific
way, and scientific authority is tied closely to the scientific field and its practices of objectivation
(see below). Further, as we shall see below, the reception of both social and natural science in
political practice often follows the same structural features. So, even though differences exist,
important similarities prevail.
Drawing on the understanding of science as a practice, three observations from Bourdieu’s
sociology of science will structure the discussion of science in securitization processes below.
First, science objectifies its object of study and plays an important role in the production of difference
and hierarchies in society. This may lead to closing off debates on certain issues. Second, the
social world can be conceived as being structured in fields, where the distribution of symbolic
capital is important for determining the ‘authority of the speaker’ (the securitizing actor) or of an
utterance (speech act). With a position of (symbolic) power and a ‘sense of the game’, an actor
gains ‘a place from where to speak’ in a specific field – for example, the scientific field or the field
of security. These two mechanisms relate to the external dimension to securitization identified in
the first part of this article. Finally, third, scientific facts – observations, products, methods (or
theories) – can be mobilized strategically by agents in political struggles as a form of capital in
securitizations. This concerns the internal mechanism or ‘grammar’ of securitization. These three
mechanisms are analytically distinct in the discussion of securitization theory, in the sense that they
address different aspects of the theory, but they are related in Bourdieu’s sociology. One, however,
does not collapse into the other two. With the aid of Bourdieusian concepts, I flesh out these observations
below and add illustrations from contemporary security.16
Objectivation: Closing down controversy
Bourdieu described intellectual enterprise – science – as a practice among other practices (Swartz,
1997: 58–9) concerned with how to understand and explain (social) phenomena.Aveil of scientific
objectivism and distance was a historically constructed part of its habitus.17
Science was seen as
reflexively related to the social world in a particular way. Through an important distinction between
‘science-practice’ and ‘practice-practice’, Bourdieu let the researcher assume a special role as an
active part in a process called objectivation, in which human practice – unintentionally or intentionally
– was categorized and rationalized in order to form systematic categories and solid conclusions.
In Bourdieu’s (1977: 2) words:
in taking up a point of view on the action, withdrawing from it in order to observe it from above and from
a distance, [the scientist] constitutes practical activity as an object of observation and analysis, a
representation.
Villumsen Berling: Science and securitization	 391
This created an ‘altogether different vision’ that, unfortunately, ‘risk[s] destroying its object or
creating pure artefacts whenever it [is] applied without critical reflection’ (Bourdieu, 1998: 130).
The scientist was thus seen as an interlocutor in the formation of practice-practice and could be
responsible for consecrating a social reality with scientific status – making it next to impossible to
change it. Accordingly, the scientist’s analyses potentially prescribe action and exercise a specific
kind of symbolic violence on practice-practice.
As an illustration, consider the early years of the RAND Corporation, where a group of researchers
set out to explain the new security situation from a social-scientific standpoint (Kaplan, 1983;
Schelling, 1958).18
With no empirical evidence to support their findings (no nuclear war had been
fought!), the group developed a thought-provoking and immensely influential view of how nuclear
strategy should be performed. From the models it developed, policy advice was deducted and
policy formed. The necessity of nuclear deterrence was objectified by scientists with a habitus
belonging to the scientific field. Some controversy remained in the scientific field, however: Green
(1966: xiii) concluded a study of the methodology of the deterrence theory of the day with the
statement that the theory’s ‘air of authority was and is completely spurious’. Some of the conclusions
seemed ‘absurd: for example, the casual assumptions that the “rational” response to a nuclear
strike on one’s cities is a counterstrike on the attacker’s cities’ (Green, 1966: xi). This controversy,
however, did not travel to the political realm. The RAND people not only were good at producing
scientific knowledge,19
but also had efficient channels for transmission of their ideas to practitioners
– including politicians (Kaplan, 1983; Wolfson, 1972: 22). Many in the US government felt
that ‘it added scientific legitimacy’ (Kaplan 1983: 131) to listen. The black-boxed fact of nuclear
deterrence that was manufactured through a process involving a specific kind of power tied to
objectivation – the power to define and categorize (Bigo, 2002: 70) – entered the political field and
closed down controversy there. Science set the scene and determined the value of various statements
and ‘incidents’. In the case of nuclear strategy, game theory became the chessboard upon
which the game was played. The rules of the game, and the possible games being played, were
objectified by scientific standards established within economics and mathematics (Kaplan, 1983:
121). And so was the necessity to deter in order to produce security. In the words of Green (1966:
xiv), ‘this condition has come about largely because of our society’s great respect for the claims of
science and expertise’. In that sense, ‘Bourdieu takes the conventional argument that science has a
“feedback effect” on social reality a step further. In his work he insists heavily on the role played
by academia in the (re)production of social hierarchies’ (Leander, 2002: 605).
For securitization theory, this adds a contextual dimension to the political processes in the
field of security: Science can exert a considerable degree of influence on what is being said and
what not. It can (co)determine the setting and the issues deemed legitimate and ‘true’ as objects
of security. Theoretically, this influence of science links up with the discussion of securitization
theory’s spectrum of social reality ranging from the non-politicized and politicized to the securitized
(see above). Science may hold a power of actively fertilizing a move from the politicized
or securitized to the non-politicized through scientific practices of objectivation and a closing
down of controversy in the political realm. This constitutes the first mechanism of science in
relation to securitization theory. And it produces a democratically problematic outcome that differs
from the legitimation of extreme measures through fierce securitization moves: The nonpoliticized
has no language; it is ‘what we know without knowing that we know it’ – what
Bourdieu referred to as doxic practice.20
Without debate, without language, security strategies,
for example, can become so deeply rooted that change becomes utopian and emergency measures
become everyday practice.21
392		 Security Dialogue 42(4-5)
The authority of the speaker
Related to the mechanism of objectivation, but analytically distinct from it, is the production of
authority in specific fields. Salter (2008: 344) argues that ‘to engage with the ethical or normative
dilemma of the analyst’s involvement in securitization processes, we must first ask “what makes
an intervention successful”?’ For Bourdieu, authority is produced in fields structured by different
types of field-specific, valued capital – military capital, social capital (networks), economic capital,
scientific capital, etc. (Villumsen, 2008).
A field’s limits are determined by an agreement on the ‘stakes at stake’ and the reach of the
effects of the field.22
Some agents possess more valued capital than others and thus hold a position
‘from where to speak with authority’ (Bourdieu, 2004: 34; Leander, 2005: 812). As argued above,
Buzan et al. (1998) recognize that the standing of the speaker is important in securitizations (‘security
is a structured field’), but offer no tools for studying this element in a systematic way. A
Bourdieusian focus on fields and field-specific capital could pave the way for an empirically sensitive
approach to this issue.
With relation to the security field, a range of types of capital have been analysed as important.
Huysmans (2002b) points to humanitarian capital, Williams (2007) to military and especially cultural
capital, and I have argued that military capital is important, as are social and economic capital
(Villumsen, 2008). But, what is perhaps most interesting for the purposes of this article is the extent
to which scientific capital is also co-determining the hierarchy in the field of security and the
chances of winning and speaking with authority (Berling, forthcoming). Two brief examples will
serve to illustrate such a mechanism: one relates to authority produced by the natural sciences, the
other to the social sciences. First, Brauch (2009: 94) argues with reference to the climate debate
that ‘the scientific messages of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], due to its
high scientific … reputation … have reached a global audience’ (emphasis added). In other words,
the scientific setting has given scientists ‘a place from where to speak’ in the security field.23
Brauch does not give this any more than superficial attention in his attempt to argue that global and
environmental change has been successfully securitized. However, without attention to the special
status of science in society and the production of authority in specific fields, he risks overlooking
the mechanism of authority production underpinning the IPCC’s success.
A social-scientific example concerns the spread and status of the democratic peace thesis. From
being a philosophical ideal, the thesis was solidified through scientific methods (COW and Polity
datasets) and ended up being used to support the USA’s security strategy in 1995 (White House,
1995). During the election campaign in 1992, would-be president Bill Clinton was advised to
declare democracy promotion a top priority owing to the scientifically certified relation between
democracy and peace (Hamilton, 1992; Scholarz, 1992). By establishing a relation between a given
regime type and peace (or, initially, the absence of war), researchers created certainty about the
relations between a certain type of countries: democracies. This not only gave politicians a strategy
in a situation where old truths about the nature of the international system were under pressure. It
also hurled democratic peace theorists into a position of authority in the political field in the USA.
This added to the symbolic power of their scientific product (the democratic peace thesis) and
bolstered their standing in both the scientific and the practical worlds. Democratic peace researchers
could establish themselves as spokespersons (or authority) for the ‘nature’ of relations between
democratic states (Büger and Villumsen, 2007).
These observations do not translate into science holding the most powerful position in the field
of security or imply that science will always have a role to play in securitizations. Even if science’s
habitus involves a sense of having special access to the truth (Bourdieu, 2004) and the political
Villumsen Berling: Science and securitization	 393
field seems to cast science with the authority of objectivity, there is nothing universal about this.
The weight of science needs to be determined empirically through a study of the context of securitizations
as constituted by fields and field-specific capital. And, importantly, no a priori exclusion
of, say, the social sciences as powerful can be supported, as the above example indicates.
Mobilization of scientific facts
A third science mechanism concerns the internal workings of the grammar of securitization: If
science enjoys a position in society that sets it apart from other social practices, the products of
science – for example, facts, scientific models, data – can be mobilized strategically24
by agents as
‘weapons’ in political struggles in their efforts to secure for themselves the power to impose the
legitimate version of the social world and its divisions (Swartz, 1997: 89). The mobilization of, say,
scientific products such as the democratic peace thesis in order to arrive at an agreement on the
spread of democracies as a security strategy (see above) or the presentation of a model showing the
covariation of greenhouse-gas emissions and rises in sea levels in order to underline the objectivity
of human-made rises in world temperatures (Brauch, 2009) are examples of this. These mobilizations
strive to close off debate and create doxic practice and objectivation, but will often find
themselves in orthodoxy/heterodoxy struggles. But, when a relation is framed in technical terms,
the knowledge about this relation can only be challenged by using, for example, sophisticated statistical
techniques and academic vocabulary. In this sense, scientific capital is needed in order to
counter these mobilizations.25
To continue with the example from the debate on global and environmental change, a number
of models have been central in the moves leading to a near-consensus. Brauch (2009) describes
what he calls the new security danger with the use of models from both the IPCC and the Mauna
Loa Observatory in Hawaii. He reproduces a graph with the following explanatory text: ‘The new
security danger in the Anthropocene posed by changes in atmospheric CO2 measured at the Mauna
Loa Observatory in Hawaii (1958–2007)’ (Brauch, 2009: 67). The text not only gives a visual representation
of a drastic development and couples this image with the scientificity of a long time
span. It also labels the development a security danger. Drawing on data from the IPCC, Brauch
(2009: 67) argues that ‘the security danger posed by hydro meteorological hazards has killed ca.
1.5 million people and affected more than 5 billion people … and the trend has been rising in both
number and intensity…. [S]uch events will be very likely during the 21st century’. The scientific
language ‘very likely’, the graph, the numbers, the historical mapping and the mentioning of fivesevenths
of the world population in a matter-of-fact way all add to the weight of the argument.
This constitutes the internal mechanism of science with relation to securitization: the value
ascribed to scientific products as ‘aces’ or ‘trumps’ should be kept in mind when analysing securitization
attempts. There is no causal mechanism, however: the mobilization of scientific ‘facts’
does not guarantee success, but it is an important factor to be reckoned with.
Conclusion: Science and practical reflexivity in securitization
studies
Stating that science is a factor in political practice seems to be becoming uncontroversial. But, how
science works in securitizations has remained underdeveloped. By turning this question into one of
‘mechanisms’, this article has tried to fertilize debate on this issue with the aid of Bourdieusian
concepts. In the process, science materialized as concrete questions of how objectivation, scientific
394		 Security Dialogue 42(4-5)
authority and scientific facts work in relation to securitization processes. The first and second mechanisms
relate to the context of securitizations, while the third concerns the internal grammar of securitization
theory. The three mechanisms are related, I argued, but analytically distinct in the sense
that they capture different aspects of the science issue with relation to securitization. None of them
are constant, but should be read as open research questions that require contextual, empirical answers.
Apart from directing our attention to concrete workings of science in securitization, the discussion
of the three mechanisms also raised the question of whether the two centres of gravity in
securitization theory have been adequately theorized. With the help of Bourdieu’s sociology, I
argued that in order to understand science in securitization, a contextual dimension is pivotal. The
concepts of objectivation, fields and field-specific capital stepped in to do the conceptual work in
this regard in the article. Further, the internal centre of gravity was supplemented with a focus on
the ‘weapons’ that agents can mobilize in securitization attempts. These were conceptualized
through the Bourdieusian concept of strategic manoeuvring. A further development in this direction,
I argued, could develop securitization theory on these specific points.
The article illustrated the three science mechanisms through examples drawn from both natural
and social science. All cases could have revealed instances of all mechanisms, but in order to show
the diversity of science in play – and not least to counter the myth that social science only rarely
produces objectivation, authority and ‘facts’ because of a lack of autonomy and the omnipotence
of social constructivism – I made a point of including a range of different examples. The cases
revealed that the social sciences have indeed been involved in processes of, for example, objectivation
that have led to debate-stopping and doxic practice in international security. While Buzan et
al. (1998) focused primarily on natural science, this article argued that the social sciences also need
to be taken into account.
So, even in the face of the massive attempts at deconstructing the objectivist truth ideal in the
social sciences in general over the past thirty years or so, and though truth may not hold the gold
standard it formerly did, something seems to happen, I argued, when science leaves the scientific
field: It seems that science – whatever type – has a tendency to perform a function in the political
field that glosses over the controversies often still active in the scientific field. It is therefore still
justified to investigate the status of science in society: the philosophical deconstruction of truth
does not smoothly spill over into a practical devaluation of science as such.
This inevitably points a finger to ourselves as researchers: How do we balance the different
mechanisms possibly at play in and around securitizations? Can we use these mechanisms strategically
to desecuritize? Or, is the securitization–science relationship a maze with no exit? Seen in this
light, the discussion in this article can be taken as a call for practical reflexivity on the part of the
securitization scientist.26
When acting as external consultants to practical politics, commenting in
the news or writing op-eds, practical reflexivity about how ‘facts’are presented and how comments
are placed within a larger sociological setting of authority can guide the practices of scientists.
Perhaps, with time, this can produce answers to how to deal with the normative dilemma of writing
security, as formulated by Jef Huysmans (2002a).
Notes
  1.	 The questions of the politicization of science and science-as-understood-in-science are thus not the topic
of this article.
  2.	 I use Bourdieu’s word ‘objectivation’ and not the more common ‘objectification’ to signal the approach
of the article.
  3.	 The literature on securitization is vast. This section teases out central elements of the theory in order to
capture the workings of science in relation to securitization processes.
Villumsen Berling: Science and securitization	 395
  4.	 This spectrum bears resemblance to the distinction between the sedimented and the politicized in Laclau
and Mouffe (1985).
  5.	 A debate about authorized language can be found in Bourdieu (1991: 107–17); see also Butler (1997).
  6.	 I thus agree with Balzacq (2005: 178–84) that securitization theory has not adequately addressed the
issue of context, but differ in my reading of it.
  7.	 As Bourdieu (1988) was with regard to the political field, I am aware that science does not hold the most
powerful position in the field of security. Indeed, it might very well be a dominated part of it.
  8.	 It lies beyond the scope of this article to present Bourdieu’s thoughts in full. For an overview, see Swartz
(1997). Within security, Bourdieu has been used extensively in recent years (Balzacq, 2005; Bigo, 2000;
Guzzini, 2000; Huysmans, 2002b; Leander, 2005; Pouliot, 2010; Villumsen, 2008). For an overview, see
Villumsen (2009).
  9.	 Buzan et al. (1998) also focus on the production of natural-science facts.
10.	 The Paris School has mapped the security field from a perspective that combines Bourdieu and Foucault
(Bigo, 2000).
11.	 These experts are not scientists per se but people who occupy positions of expertise within, for example,
police forces (Bigo, 2000).
12.	 Buzan et al. (1998: 73) remind us to balance scientific standards with engagement with practice.
Otherwise, one risks ‘being stabbed in the back scientifically’.
13.	 For an overview of science studies, see Pickering (1992).
14.	 Bourdieu (2004: 52) even argued that scientific agents have an ‘interest in disinterestedness’.
15.	 Hacking (1999) calls this process the ‘looping-effect’: the categories we use for classifying/naming
people interact with people’s self-conceptions.
16.	 All cases contain features relevant to all three mechanisms described. I have chosen to pick different
cases in order to show the variety of social and natural science at work in securitization and that controversy
in the political realm does not always follow from social science facts.
17.	The habitus was defined as a temporally situated social structure nested in social agents. In Bourdieu’s
(1977: 72) words: ‘systems of durable, transposable dispositions’.
18.	 I would like to thank Ole Wæver for directing my attention to this case of objectivation.
19.	 Quantitative analysis, systems theory, game theory and the use of computers were considered ‘scientific’:
‘Maybe the numbers were questionable, but they were tangible’ (Kaplan, 1983: 121).
20.	 The doxa is shared by both orthodox and heterodox positions and is therefore only changed extremely
rarely (Bourdieu, 1977: 164–9).
21.	 On this point, see the work of the Paris School.
22.	 In security, the stake has been argued to concern the definition of the ‘real threat’ (Bigo, 2002) or the
meaning of security (Huysmans, 2006; Villumsen, 2008).
23.	 Though generally accepted by the political level, instances of controversy in the scientific field did spill
over into the political field (e.g. in the events that have become known as ‘Climategate’).
24.	 For Bourdieu (1990: 16), strategizing is social. It is a ‘more or less conscious pursuit of the accumulation
of symbolic capital’.
25.	 Cultural and scientific capital were exclusive because they required apprehension before they could be
appropriated or ‘consumed’ (Swartz, 1997: 76).
26.	 On practical reflexivity, see Bourdieu (2004: 90); Villumsen and Büger (2010).
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Trine Villumsen Berling is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for Advanced Security Theory, University
of Copenhagen. Research interests include practices of expertise in European security and Bourdieusian
sociology in international relations. Publications include ‘Beyond the gap: Relevance, fields of practice, and
the securitizing effects of (democratic peace) research’ (with Christian Büger), in Journal of International
Relations and Development 10(4); and The International Political Sociology of Security: Rethinking Theory
and Practice (Routledge, forthcoming). She would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of
Security Dialogue, Christian Büger, and Ole Wæver for their insightful comments.