The environment and emancipation in critical security studies: the case of the Canadian Arctic

Harrington, Cameron; Lecavalier, Emma

doi:10.1080/21624887.2013.856197

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…According to the current coordinator of the vault, Åsmund Asdal, and Luigi Guarino, placing the SGSV there is also a reflection of the geopolitical trust and affection for Norway: 'Offering the world a safe place for seeds is in accordance with long standing Norwegian policies for supporting biodiversity conservation, and stakeholders all over the world trust that Norway will take good care of the seeds' (Asdal and Guarino, 2018: 391). It also aligns with other narratives of the far northand Scandinavia in particularas the safest place on Earth (Harrington and Lecavalier, 2014;LaFauci, 2018).…”

Section: The Politics Of the Doomsday Vaultsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…This article adds to these fledgling discussions by exploring how imaginaries of security in the Anthropocene are materialised. This adds important contextualisation to the literature on Anthropocene security, which to date has mostly focused on conceptual critiques of dominant disciplinary paradigms rather than specific practices (Dalby, 2020; Harrington and Shearing, 2017; McDonald, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault

Harrington

2022

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This article examines how imaginaries of security in the Anthropocene function at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV), otherwise known as the ‘Doomsday Vault’. Recent explorations by scholars of security have suggested that different ways of seeing, understanding, acting in, and imagining the world are necessary to adequately respond to complex crises in the Anthropocene. The dissolution of the nature/culture divide and the existential risk from planetary threats are said to require new and creative formations of security. Buried in the Norwegian high Arctic, the heavily fortified SGSV was built in 2008 as a planetary-scale, ‘deep-time organisation’ that would forever secure a wide variety of plant seeds and their genetic makeup against regional or global upheavals. The article argues that his seed ‘ark’ materialises three Anthropocene security imaginaries: apocalypse, hope and escape. The prevalence and use of these imaginaries reveal the stability of long-held security logics and challenge the widely-held belief in the innately transformative properties of the Anthropocene concept for security. Instead, the SGSV demonstrates the difficulty in overcoming a collective mindfulness that fixes security to eternal forms even in the midst of unprecedented threats, interventions and technology.

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Section: The Politics Of the Doomsday Vaultsupporting

confidence: 86%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault

Harrington

2022

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…The significant transformations in indigenous politics in the circumpolar region may herald the emergence of new, transnational and indigenised forms of sovereignty and political organisation (Wilson 2007; Ejesiak 2013; Shadian 2014), including possibilities for decolonised forms of political community that reflect indigenous priorities and dispositions towards culture, resources, and sustainability. Reimagining Arctic futures invites questioning whether state-driven Arctic security policies that prioritise militarism and resource extraction can actually sustain the regional ecology or support the wellbeing of Arctic inhabitants (Broadhead 2010; Smith 2010; Greaves 2012; Nickels 2013; Harrington and Lecavalier 2014). In their place, we might imagine an Arctic in which extractive activities most responsible for damaging the Arctic ecology through climate change and local contamination are replaced with economic activities that support the priorities and traditions of Arctic inhabitants themselves.…”

Section: Towards Critical Environmental Security In the Arcticmentioning

confidence: 99%

Securing sustainability: the case for critical environmental security in the Arctic

Greaves¹

2016

Polar Record

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The politics, economies, and ecology of the Arctic region are experiencing fundamental transformation driven largely by human-caused environmental change. Drawing on the work of Robert Cox, this article presents a critical account of environmental security that allows security issues in the Arctic to be reconceptualised. It outlines the environmental changes transforming the Arctic, and theorises the Arctic as a regional environmental security complex in which conditions of security for state and non-state referent objects are predicated on a particular ecological context. It then surveys state- and human security issues in the Arctic, and argues that environmental change has destabilised the ecological base on which the contemporary Arctic as a cooperative region supportive of human activity has been built. The article concludes by outlining alternative ways of conceiving of Arctic security that are more compatible with maintaining the region's ecological base, and suggests that dominant approaches to Arctic security are pathological because they remain premised on the control, extraction and consumption of hydrocarbon resources. It argues that, in the context of the geological Anthropocene, security cannot be sustainable if it fails to address the relationship between human wellbeing and human-caused environmental change, or informs practices that further contribute to environmental change.

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“…The CSS concept has diverged from TSS in the existing literature regarding emancipation, societal security, and ethics (Aradau et al, 2014;Nunes, 2012;Bourne & Bulley, 2011;Harrington & Lecavalier, 2014;Waever, 2012;Booth, 2005). Furthermore, fear, risk, and violence have been integrated into security studies through the CSS approach (Biṙdişli, 2014;Stamnes, 2004) while criticising realism's foundations regarding security (Newman, 2010).…”

Section: Methodology and Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…346-347). CSS also brought ethics to the security agenda (Bourne & Bulley, 2011;Harrington & Lecavalier, 2014). Although there are various schools in CSS, according to Waever, Aberystwyth School should be taken into consideration as representing CSS due to the emancipatory concept (Waever, 2012, p. 52).…”

Section: Critical Security Studies (Css)mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Perspective on Critical Security Concept and International Migration Nexus through Copenhagen School: The Quest for Societal Security

Demirkol

2023

Lectio Socialis

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This study dwells on the quest for a critical security perspective on international migration. Therefore, how international migration could be perceived through critical security studies is the main research question of this study. Critical Security Studies (CSS) or Welsh School of security studies emerged after Robert Cox’s debate between problem-solving and critical theories, especially after the 1990s. In this respect, CSS focus on questioning the mainstream theories and their interpretation of security. Instead of accepting the state as the referent object, critical security studies provide other elements that may be threatened, so that related to the security. On the one hand, CSS is, therefore, critical against the traditional approaches to security as realism and liberalism. Securitization, on the other hand, as Copenhagen School provided a speech act to put an issue into the field of security. International migration is one of the accurate examples of securitization. In this study, we employed CSS and securitization perspectives to international migration to understand how international migration could be assessed through critical theories.

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The environment and emancipation in critical security studies: the case of the Canadian Arctic

Cited by 9 publications

References 30 publications

The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault

The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault

Securing sustainability: the case for critical environmental security in the Arctic

A Perspective on Critical Security Concept and International Migration Nexus through Copenhagen School: The Quest for Societal Security

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