Returning to the roots of ontological security: insights from the existentialist anxiety literature

Abstract

Research on ontological security in International Relations (IR) has grown significantly in recent years. However, this scholarship is marked by conceptual ambiguity concerning the meaning of and relationship between the key concepts of ontological insecurity and anxiety. In addition, ontological security scholarship has been criticized for applying a concept that was originally developed for understanding individuals to states, and for being excessively concerned with continuity while largely ignoring change or seeing it as a negative force to be avoided. Despite such issues, however, reflection on the theoretical origins of ontological security remains limited. Based on such reflection, the present article argues that these issues can be circumvented if we return to one of the theoretical precursors of ontological security studies, the existentialist literature on anxiety. R.D. Laing, who coined the term ontological security, was strongly influenced by the existentialist anxiety theorists. Anthony Giddens, however, who drew on Laing and whose understanding of ontological security permeates IR scholarship, explicitly rejected the distinction between normal and neurotic anxiety, which was central to the work of existentialists like Rollo May. This article reintroduces this distinction. Doing so is useful, the article argues, both for providing conceptual clarity and for moving beyond the criticisms of ontological security mentioned above. More generally, the article suggests that ontological security studies has much to gain from drawing on the insights of the existentialist literature on anxiety to a greater extent than has hitherto been the case.

The Ideological Recomposition of Political Elites in Serbia since 2012

“…9 One of them, K. (a Belgradian woman aged 82), replied: 'It doesn't matter for whom, just they (NATO) don't bomb us (again)'. Such verbatim illustrates the prevailing theoretical view that ontological security is rooted in the existentialist literature on anxiety (see Gustafsson -Krickel -Choi 2020). Almost two decades later, such deeply embedded sentiments fuel populist politics.…”

Studiet av internasjonal politikk etter 11. september 2001

“…La oss gi noen eksempler. For det første vokste det frem forskning på det som kalles ontologisk sikkerhet (og ontologisk usikkerhet), som gjerne forstås som «security not of the body but of the self, the subjective sense of who one is, which enables and motivates action and choice» (Mitzen, 2006, s. 344; en nylig oversikt finnes i Gustafsson & Krickel-Choi, 2020). For det andre ble IP mer opptatt av følelser, og da ikke minst frykt og hat (Bleiker & Hutchison, 2008).…”

“…Studiet av identitet har også gjennomgått dramatiske vendinger. Der studiet av (kollektiv) identitet en gang fremsto som det sentrale kritiske grepet til konstruktivismen, er situasjonen mye mindre klar i dag, der identitet i større grad forstås i lys av ontologisk sikkerhet (Gustafsson & Krickel-Choi, 2020;Mitzen, 2006;Steele, 2008) og status (Leira, 2016).…”

Bodies Coming Apart and Bodies Becoming Parts: Widening, Deepening, and Embodying Ontological (In)Security in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…As Rosher goes on, “we perform ourselves in the world through embedded routines and discourses which serve to ‘bracket out’ the underlying fact that life is contingent and largely beyond our control in order that we are able to ‘go on’ with the everydayness of life” ( Rosher 2020 ). As has recently been (re)discovered within OSS, both Giddens and Laing do within their accounts implicitly acknowledge embodiment—how bodies and selves are mutually constituted (See Gustafsson and Krickel-Choi 2020 ; Krickel-Choi 2021 .) However, as Nina Krickel-Choi (2021 , 1) has recently chronicled, the notion of embodiment has been almost completely glossed over by IR's OSS as the “discipline-specific incorporation [of OST] has had consequences.” Indeed, given the discipline's purview and historically acute disembodiment, IR theorists drawing on OST often have primarily used and “scaled up” Giddens’ and Laing's work to understand state behavior (see, e.g., Mitzen 2006a , 2006b , 2008; Steele 2008 , 2019 ; Gustafsson 2014 , 2015 ; Behravesh 2018 ; Greve 2018 ; Behravesh 2018 ; Capan and Zarakol 2019 ; Ejdus 2020 ) while others more latterly—and reflecting intradisciplinary preferences—take their referent object as the individual, using OSS to scrutinize the very particularly, yet problematically, conceived and assumed individuals’ behavior, interactions, and (in)security (see, e.g., Browning 2018a , 2018b , 2019 ; Flockhart 2016 ; Innes 2017 ; Homolar and Scholz 2019 ).…”