Vernacular Security: The Politics of Feeling Safe in Global, National and Local Worlds

Abstract

Tracing the political history of the concept of ‘security’ through a variety of global, national and regional inflections, this article argues for the analytical usefulness of the concept of ‘vernacular security’. Entailed by this concept is a proposal to treat ‘security’ as a socially situated and discursively defined practice open to comparison and politically contextualized explication, rather than merely an analytical category that needs refined definition and consistent use. While the ideas and politics of security associated with the rise of global governance are built on late-modern ideas about what it means to be safe, global governance is not seamless in its extension. The apparent universalism of the ontology and politics of global security therefore breaks down into a more complex pattern upon closer inspection. Based on material from Indonesia, the article suggests that the ‘onto-politics’ of security have global, national and local inflections, the interplay of which requires re-examination.

Introduction: Everyday narratives in world politics

“…Meanwhile, some scholars who conduct research that falls firmly within the agenda we seek to consolidates eschew the 'everyday' all together, and instead use the term 'vernacular' (see Bubandt, 2005;Vaughan-Williams and Stevens, 2016). Vernacular refers to the informal speech used by a particular social group, and is used to contrast elite and non-elite, official and unofficial, ways of seeing and talking.…”

The Politics, Practice and Paradox of ‘Ethnic Security’ in Bosnia-Herzegovina

“…Furthermore, it offers no pathway to understand why-although in peoples' perception ethnic fear is not a foremost concern-this form of manipulation by ethnic elites is possible. I suggest that the critical peace-building scholarship could be enriched by recognising security as an institutionally, discursively and socially constituted practice and individual security as collectively produced (Bubant 2005;Kaldor & Selchow 2014). Inquiry should not focus solely, or even primarily, on institutions but rather on the interplay of these three dimensions in the context of international intervention.…”

The Security Gap in Syria: Individual and Collective Security in ‘Rebel-held’ Territories

“…Early on in the uprising, the Assad government played the communal card, covering cities like Damascus and Latakia with posters that carried slogans like 'Beware those who support sectarianism' (author's observations 2011) and promoting the idea that only the Assad government could be trusted to protect the country's minorities against an opposition it labelled as ' extremist Islamists.' This was at a time when no such threat existed, representing the deliberate construction of ' ontological insecurity' (Bubandt 2005) as a means to secure its power through fear, and became a self-fulfilling prophecy.…”