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Reps Shape Reality – Security Specific
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Reps Shape Reality – Security SpecificSecurity is discursive and a social construction – effective activism and policy require that it be analyzed (this is specific to environmental security) Litfin, 99 – Karen T., assistant professor of political science, University of Washington (“Constructing Environmental Security and Ecological Interdependence,” Global Governance, vol. 5, 1999, http://faculty.washington.edu/litfin/research/litfin-constructing.pdf)RK To claim that environmental problems are social constructions is not to deny their physical character; to believe otherwise would be ecologically and politically irresponsible. One of the pitfalls of security language is the presumption that security signifies some reality with a concrete external referent. As Ole Wrever argues, rather than being a sign for an objective referent, security is most aptly understood as a speech act: "The utterance itself is the act."19 Although his critique could provide the basis for a more reflective conception of security as a socially constructed set of concerns, Wrever opposes an expanded notion of security, including the "securitization of the environment," on the grounds that "security is articulated only from aspecific prace, in an institutional voice, by elites."20 In other words, only those concerned with classic state-centric threat-defense dynamics are entitled to perform security speech acts. This reading not only ignores the fact that security speech acts are performed on a daily basis by an increasingly diffuse group of scholars and practitioners, but it also abdicates too much terrain to the security traditionalists. The state is not the sole subject of security, nor is coercive power the sole means of seeking it. If Cold War hawks could seize on the ambiguous symbol of national security, then contemporary analysts may also deploy the ambiguous symbol of environmental security. But to do so reflectively, without falling prey to the sorts of ideological excess that characterized Cold War security discourse, they must be conscious of how they construct their speech acts. Security language has been characterized in terms of an objectivist epistemology. This concern is particularly relevant with respect to environmental security, which may require the authority of science to demonstrate the existence of "objective" threats.21 Although scientific information is clearly of great importance in international agenda setting for environmental issues, it by no means provides an objective factual basis on which rational policy can be formulated. Knowledge and information are framed and interpreted in light of specific interests and contending discourses.22 Even in the context of real material dangers, the invocation of environmental security threats is fundamentally about socially constructed risks.23 Wolfers observed long ago that the subjective dimension, the absence of fear, is at least as important to security language as the existence of material threats.24 Likewise, "environmt?ntal scarcities" are not purely objective phenomena but are also socially constructed and culturally dependent. For instance, a person requires 4 to 6 liters of water per day to survive. On this basis, potable water is abundant in most places. Yet social scientists routinely define scarcity as less than 2,740 liters per person per day, based on consumption rates in advanced industrialized countries.25 Likewise, invocations of environmental security tend to naturalize what are essentially social, political, and economic problems.26 If the threat-defense mechanism is mapped onto a naturalized understanding of environmental problems, then the quest for security may portray nature as enemy to be controlled and conquered, a stance that itself may be at the root of the mounting global environmental crisis. An associated pitfall is the tendency to paint environmental dangers in falsely universalizing terms. If security is a speech act, then its proponents need to become self-conscious of the specific interests and cultural biases from which they speak. Calls for environmental security have entirely different policy implications'depending on whether they come from Pacific islanders threatened with sea-level rise as a result of climate change, affluent urban dwellers suffocating from automotive emissions, or subsistence farmers without access to clean drinking water. Thus, if environmental security discourse is monopolized by those with an unreflective bias toward the advanced industrialized world, then it becomes an easy target for those in developing countries who are already wary of "environmental imperialism."27 A final cautionary note: unreflectively depicting environmental problems in security terms runs the risk of contributing to "a proliferating array of discourses of danger." As Michael Dillon maintains, security is neither a fact of nature nor a noun that names something, but a sociocultural aim. 28 Simon Dalby argues further that if "insecurity is not the problem, but rather the ontological condition of mortal human life, then the solution in terms of security, the assertion of control to ensure life, is ironically potentially a threat to life itself, that which is insecure in the first place."29 The Cold War quest for security, whose toxic and radioactive legacy will perpetuate insecurity for decades to come, should offer a sobering lesson. More generally, the driving force behind global environmental degradation is the unrestrained pursuit of material security, suggesting that the shortsighted pursuit of security may perpetuate environmental insecurity. Objectivity Bad – Patriarchy TurnClaims to objectively represent reality hide masculine power structures Mackinnon, 00 – Catherine A., Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan (“Points Against Postmodernism,” Chicago-Kent Law Review, vol. 75 http://www.adelinotorres.com/filosofia/Against%20Postmodernism.pdf)RK Feminism did call for rethinking everything. For one simple instance, the distinction drawn since the Enlightenment between the universal and the particular was revealed to be false, because what had been called universal was the particular from the point of view of power. For another, the subjective/objective division was revealed to be false, because the objective standpoint—or so I argued in Toward a Feminist Theory of the State—was specifically the view from the male position of power. That is, those who occupy what is called the objective standpoint socially, who also engage in the practice from that standpoint called objectification—the practice of making people into things to make them knowable—this standpoint and practice is an expression of the social position of dominance that is occupied by men. This standpoint is not positionless or point-of-viewless, as it purports to be; it does not simply own accuracy and fairness as many believe; it embodies and asserts a specific form of power, one that had been invisible to politics and theory but, by feminism, lay exposed as underlying them. This theory was not an affirmation of the feminine particularity as opposed to the masculine universal. It was not a claim to female subjectivity or a search for it. It saw that these concepts, and the purported divide between them, are products of male power that cannot see themselves or much else. Until exposed, these concepts looked general, empty of content, universally available to all, valid, mere tools, against which all else fell short. Feminism exposed how prior theory was tautologous to its own terms of validation, and could hardly be universal because it had left out at least half the universe. Neither did feminism precisely lay claim to the territory that women had been assigned under this system. More, it was its claim to us that we sought to disclaim. We were not looking for a plusher cell or a more dignified stereotype. We were not looking to elaborate the feminine particularity as if it was ours; we had been living inside its walls for centuries. We were not looking to claim the subjectivity or subject position to which we had been relegated any more than we sought to oppress others by gaining access to the power to objectify and dominate that we had revealed as such. All this would have left what we were trying to challenge squarely in place; by comparison with our agenda, it was playing with, or within, blocks. Identity as such was not our issue. Inside, we knew who we were to a considerable extent. Gender identity—the term introduced by Robert Stoller in 1964 to refer to the mental representation of the self as masculine or feminine—situates women’s problem in the wrong place.5 Our priority was gaining access to the reality of our collective experience in order to understand and change it for all of us in our own lifetimes. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 0.86 Mb. Share with your friends:
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