sectors, [they] are pushed into the role as securitisers’ capable of influencing political decision. 45
Overall, the silent security dilemmas are caused by the CS narrow
understanding of societal security, in that it often just focuses on national
identity and ethnic groups, which reinstates the role of the state as the
securitising actor dealing with the threats. And secondly, their definition of
security that promotes reactionary responses though a discourse of immediate
threats and survival. In antithesis, for CSS theorists, by only placing humans as
the referent and working within an emancipatory security-paradigm that defines
security as freedom from want or fear, they promote more preventive measures.
The silence of ontological issues is also partly due to the CS failure to
grasp a coherent understanding of identity that would open the door for
ontological security discussions, and this permeates into their analysis of societal
security. Due to the fragmented nature of society Buzan and Weaver argue that
the referent object is the identity, for example, threats like mass migration can
be seen as a security issue with national identity as the referent object. The most
notorious criticism here is that by making society and identity the referent,
proponents of CS have reified society. McSweeney, for instance, heavily criticises
CS scholars for describing society as a ‘social agent which has an independent reality.’ 46 In doing so, they treat both society and identity as objective realities
that are fixed and need to be secured. As Brubaker has argued, this type of
reification often leads to a ‘substantialist’ approach to nations and ethnic groups
that wrongly treats them as ‘categories of analysis’ rather than as mere
‘categories of practice.’ Theiler highlights how even Buzan and Waever
45 Eriksson, O. ‘Observers or Advocates? On the Political Role of Security Analysts’, Cooperation and Conflict, 34 (1999), p. 316. 46 Bill Mcsweeney, "Identity And Security: Buzan And The Copenhagen School", Review Of International Studies , 22.1 (1996), 83 <https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210500118467>.
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