Securing the diasporic ‘self’ by travelling abroad: Taglit-Birthright and ontological security

Abramson, Yehonatan

doi:10.1080/1369183x.2017.1409176

Cited by 23 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Irrespective of the precise denomination, however, ontological security has proved fruitful for addressing a wide variety of theoretical and empirical concerns. It has allowed scholars interested in status (Pacher, 2019; Zarakol, 2010, 2011), revisionism (Behravesh, 2018), ideology (Marlow, 2002), and nationalism (Kinnvall, 2004; Skey, 2010) to enter into a conversation with scholars working on identity practices (DeRaismes Combes, 2017), material environments (Ejdus, 2017, 2020), collective memory (Gustafsson, 2014; Mälksoo, 2015; Subotić, 2019), transitional justice and reconciliation (Gustafsson, 2020; Mälksoo, 2019; Rumelili, 2018), diasporas (Abramson, 2019; Kinnvall and Nesbit-Larkin, 2009), regionalism (Russo and Stoddard, 2018), foreign policy (Darwich, 2016; Lupovici, 2012; Mitzen and Larson, 2017; Oppermann and Hansel, 2019), power transitions (Chacko, 2014; Young, 2017), popular protests (Solomon, 2018), populism (Browning, 2019; Kinnvall, 2018; Steele and Homolar, 2019), or security communities (Berenskoetter and Giegerich, 2010; Greve, 2018). Thus, ontological security scholarship has certainly succeeded in inaugurating a new research agenda and in generating new interpretations of a great variety of issues in international politics.…”

Section: Ontological Security In International Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Gustafsson

Krickel-Choi

2020

European Journal of International Relations

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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.

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Section: Ontological Security In International Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Gustafsson

Krickel-Choi

2020

European Journal of International Relations

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“…Such people may not identify as diasporans or may only identify as such in certain contexts. As Brubaker and others (e.g., Abramson, 2019; Betts & Jones, 2016, pp. 19–23) propose, viewing diasporas as pre‐existing entities would be an oversimplification of these complex processes of identity formation.…”

Section: The Diasporic Stancementioning

confidence: 85%

“…Brubaker (2005, p. 6) highlights boundary maintenance—‘the preservation of a distinctive identity vis‐à‐vis a host society’—as a core attribute of the diasporic stance that drives people to identify and mobilise as a diaspora (see also Abramson, 2019). Another core feature (Brubaker, 2005, pp.…”

Section: The Diasporic Stancementioning

confidence: 99%

Diaspora boundaries and racial democracy: Nationalist discourses on Judaism and Zionism in Brazil

Grossman

2023

Nations and Nationalism

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This article examines how Brazilian nationalist elites perceived Jews, Judaism and Zionism during the military dictatorship period (1964–1985). Although an explicit antisemitic discourse was socially unacceptable in Brazil, many nationalist officials and intellectuals who discussed Jewish and Zionist Brazilians among themselves during those years were using a discourse of Jewish disloyalty. This discourse depicted Jews who adopted a diasporic stance (maintaining certain ethnic and national boundaries and supporting the State of Israel) as not loyal enough to Brazil. Tracing the history of this discourse, the article shows that it was inspired and informed by particular Brazilian notions of race, ethnicity and diaspora, and especially the national narrative of racial democracy. As such, it was a uniquely Brazilian discourse, even as it shared several common characteristics with how Jews were perceived and discussed in other countries. This is illustrated by comparing the Brazilian and Argentine nationalist discourses of Jewish disloyalty.

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“…Ontological security theory in IR has grappled with these questions, and consequently with the levels of analysis by refusing to subscribe wholeheartedly to that ontological choice, instead seeking to uncover the processes behind perceptible state agency (there are too many excellent examples of this to do justice, but they include Abramson, 2019; Agius, 2017; Cash, 2017; Edjus and Rečević, 2021; Steele, 2019; Subotic and Steele, 2018). To foreground how ontological insecurity is produced in a way that interacts across and between the conventional individual-state-system triad and additional units and levels of analysis enhances the explanatory capacity of ontological security studies in IR.…”

Section: The Utility Of Levelling Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting for inequalities: divided selves and divided states in International Relations

Innes

2023

European Journal of International Relations

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Ontological security studies have added complexity to the state level of analysis in International Relations (IR) by embracing an approach that permits moving across and between levels of analysis without calcifying an assumption as to who or what constitutes the key actors of international politics. I draw on a case study of gender-based violence and subsequent responses to argue that ontological security studies in IR have thus far failed to fully account for intersectional inequalities within social narratives of security. I argue that the state is incapable of providing ontological security because of inherent inequalities that underlie national identity. It is only in attending to those inequalities that we can attend to the biases at the heart of the state. Looking to ontological insecurity in the context of trauma provides a delineated means of accessing these dynamics in a way that is formulated around a pathologised ontological insecurity (rather than an existential, and therefore normalised, process of ontological insecurity). Through the case study of the murder of Sarah Everard and the responses, the value and necessity of an intersectional approach is made clear: trauma responses that are positioned as transgressive by the patriarchal and White supremacist dominating narrative are used within that narrative to undermine the credibility of alternative narratives of security. The state adopts a technique of dividing identity and constructing normatively oppressed identities as transgressive to consolidate the state narrative of security.

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Securing the diasporic ‘self’ by travelling abroad: Taglit-Birthright and ontological security

Cited by 23 publications

References 59 publications

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

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

Diaspora boundaries and racial democracy: Nationalist discourses on Judaism and Zionism in Brazil

Accounting for inequalities: divided selves and divided states in International Relations

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