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"Ontological Security and Foreign Policy" published on by Oxford University Press.

AbstractThis paper contributes to this special issue by examining the existentialist themes re-emerging in Ontological Security Studies (OSS) and does so by proposing an under-explored and overlapping terrain regarding the function of myths and ontological security. What Blumenberg calls the 'absolutism of reality' becomes something to avoid through the process of telling, retelling, and adapting myths to suit our existential needs. The paper distinguishes our existentialist intervention into OSS from recent ones within that research community and then draws examples of the work on and of myth from the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Speaking to the need for OSS to develop an ethical-political perspective to not only explain but also change the world, the account we develop here also provides a pathway for an alternative politics based in counter-myth. It discloses, therefore, a promising and, in the face of rising authoritarianism and anti-democratic forces, necessary moral ethos regarding prescriptive ideas about what to do and how to confront and and counter the mounting challenges of global politics in the 2020s and beyond.

An introduction to the special issue: Ontological securities in world politics / Catarina Kinnvall and Jennifer Mintzen S. 3-11. - Fit for purpose? Fitting ontological security studies 'into' the discipline of International Relations / Stuart Croft and Nick Vaugham-Williams S. 12-30. - Ontological security, self-articulation and the securitization of identity / Christopher S. Browning and Pertti Joenniemi S. 31-47. - States and ontological security: a historical rethinking / Ayşse Zarakol S. 48-68. - Organizational processes and ontological (in)security: torture, the CIA and the United States / Brent J Steele S. 69-89. - Feeling ontologically (in)secure: states, traumas and the governing of gendered space / Catarina Kinnvall S. 90-108. - Drawing the discourses of ontological security: immigration and identity in the Danish and Swedish cartoon crises / Christine Agius S. 109-125. - Encountering the stranger: ontological security and the Boston Marathon bombing / ML deRaismes Combes S. 126-143

This article attempts to answer the question of why Iran is reluctant to discuss its
missile program. Unlike other studies that focus on the importance of Iran's missile
program in providing deterrence for the country and establishing a balance of
military power in the region, or that view the missile program as one of dozens
of post-revolutionary contentious issues between Iran and the United States, this
article looks into Iran's ontological security. The paper primarily argues that the
missile program has become a source of pride for Iranians, inextricably linked
to their identity. As a result, the Iranian authorities face two challenges when it
comes to sitting at the negotiation table with their Western counterparts: deep
mistrust of the West, and the ensuing sense of shame over any deal on the missile
issue. Thus, Iranian officials opted to preserve the identity components of the
program, return to normal and daily routines of life, insist on the missile program's
continuation despite sanctions and threats, and emphasize the dignity and honor
of having a missile program. The article empirically demonstrates how states
can overcome feelings of shame and mistrust. It also theoretically proves that
when physical security conflicts with ontological security, governments prefer the
former over the latter, based on the history of Iran's nuclear negotiations. They
appeal to create new narratives to justify changing their previous policies.

This paper analyzes the relationship between everyday life and the mass use of mobile communication technologies, especially smartphones. From a methodological point of view, qualitative research was used in order to grasp the meanings people give to the use of such technologies. Data were gathered through 24 focus groups and 20 in-depth interviews with youths aged between 16 and 25 years of age in Santiago de Chile between 2014 and 2015. Results show that the people's uses of mobile communication systems would be creating changes in the daily experience of time and space, and in the way in which they give stability, structure and meaning to the intersubjective world. The article concludes that the concept of ubiquitous everyday life, or hyper everyday life, may explain the meaning of the current transformations.

In this brief essay, I explore the relationship between 'states' (or more broadly, institutions of political authority) and ontological security. Drawing from historical examples, I argue that it is a mistake to assume that all 'states' seek ontological security: this generalisation applies only to those polities that claim to be the main ontological security providers. I then develop a typology of institutional ontological security provision arrangements as have existed throughout history, arguing that another reason the concept of ontological security is valuable for international relations (IR) is because it offers a way to compare systems across time and space without assuming the primacy of politics or religion. In summary, IR does not have to limit its use of the concept of ontological security to a synonym for 'state identity' – ontological security can offer much more than that by helping the discipline reach across time and space.

"This volume highlights the ways in which the prospect of peace can generate anxieties and consequently set in motion social and political processes that reproduce and reactivate conflicts. In analysing this issue, the volume builds on the notion of ontological security and its recent applications to international relations theory. Although conflicts threaten the physical security of the parties involved, they also help settle existential questions about basic parameters of life, being, and identity, and thus over time become sources of ontological security. The prospect of peace, through the resolution or transformation of conflict, threatens to unsettle the stability and consistency of self-narratives, and their associated routines and habits at the individual, group, and state levels.The contributors argue two key points: (1) that ontological insecurity may set in motion political and social processes that reproduce and reactivate conflicts; (2) that coping with peace anxieties necessitates the formulation of alternative self-narratives at the individual, societal, and state levels that re-situate the Self in relation to Other and to the world at large. Consequently, the book analyses the ways in which, and the conditions under which, conflict resolution induces ontological insecurity, and the different ways in which ontological insecurity has prevented the successful culmination of peace processes in different conflict contexts, including Cyprus, Israel-Palestine and Northern Ireland. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, conflict resolution, peace and conflict studies, social theory and IR in general"--

"This volume highlights the ways in which the prospect of peace can generate anxieties and consequently set in motion social and political processes that reproduce and reactivate conflicts. In analysing this issue, the volume builds on the notion of ontological security and its recent applications to international relations theory. Although conflicts threaten the physical security of the parties involved, they also help settle existential questions about basic parameters of life, being, and identity, and thus over time become sources of ontological security. The prospect of peace, through the resolution or transformation of conflict, threatens to unsettle the stability and consistency of self-narratives, and their associated routines and habits at the individual, group, and state levels. The contributors argue two key points: 1) that ontological insecurity may set in motion political and social processes that reproduce and reactivate conflicts; 2) that coping with peace anxieties necessitates the formulation of alternative self-narratives at the individual, societal, and state levels that re-situate the Self in relation to Other and to the world at large. Consequently, the book analyses the ways in which, and the conditions under which, conflict resolution induces ontological insecurity, and the different ways in which ontological insecurity has prevented the successful culmination of peace processes in different conflict contexts, including Cyprus, Israel-Palestine and Northern Ireland. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, conflict resolution, peace and conflict studies, social theory and IR in general"--

How do interactions in the cyber domain affect states' ontological security and how do states respond to these challenges? These are pertinent questions given the increasing influence of cyber technologies on daily life, politics, and International Relations. Over the years, state actors have faced challenges in various spheres, including security, politics, economics, and culture. However, nowadays, cyber technologies enable the emergence of effective, efficient, and powerful alternatives to the current state-system practices. This creates fundamental challenges to states' sense of self, identity, and home, calling into question states' dominant and ingrained narratives regarding their roles in the international arena. I suggest that the scholarship of ontological security, although rarely used in this context, provides intriguing analytical tools to explore these questions. This scholarship focuses on the actors' ability to maintain their sense of self, allowing researchers to explore how interactions in the cyber domain challenge states' routines, narratives, and sense of home. Furthermore, using the scholarship of ontological security to study cyber technologies can also account for states' responses, illuminating puzzling behavior that cannot be explained fully through other perspectives.

The growing literature on ontological security theory (OST) in international relations, ontological security studies (OSS), is characterized by great internal diversity. This internal pluralism is one of its greatest strengths, but it is also potentially confusing, for example, when different works using an ontological security lens arrive at contradictory conclusions without it being obvious why. In order to make sense of this diversity, this article traces two interrelated conceptual divergences related to the notion of anxiety. The first one concerns the observation that anxiety is seemingly both debilitating and an impediment to action, as well as a call to action, inspiring adaptation and change. The second divergence centers on whether ontological security is at all attainable, which is largely a matter of whether anxiety is best understood as an extraordinary and temporally limited condition or as an ever-present and normal part of life. This article argues that the divergent answers to these questions, and the problems they give rise to, are primarily the result of ambiguity with regard to the key concept of anxiety. The malleable nature of the concept of anxiety engenders deviating interpretations and applications among scholars. While awareness of these issues already goes a long way toward making sense of some of the diversity within OSS, this article further suggests ways to increase the conceptual clarity of anxiety and to address the two issues of change and attainability. Doing so increases our conceptual understanding of OST.

This paper analyses Romania's foreign policy during the first post-communist years, by employing a theoretical viewpoint based on ontological security and trauma. It uncovers the elite efforts to secure the post-totalitarian state's identity and international course. Romania's search for ontological security featured the articulation of narratives of victimhood, which were linked with its proclaimed western European identity. The Romanian identity narrative has long struggled between "the West" and "the East", trying to cope with traumatic historical events. These discursive themes and ontological insecurities were crystallized in the controversy surrounding the Romanian-Soviet "Friendship Treaty" (1991). Key Romanian officials displayed different typical responses to cultural trauma and debated the state's path to ontological security, which was reflected in the foreign policy positions.

Abstract This forum, as a part of the special issue on New Directions for Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), provides a diversity of answers to the question of how affects and emotions, and the search for ontological security, relate to foreign policy. By foregrounding the various ways to conceive the relationship between foreign policy, ontological security, collective identities, states' autobiographical narratives, emotions and affective investments, the contributors to this forum examine and chart fruitful directions in FPA. Resende explores the analytical potentials of combining the theory of Ontological Security, Foreign Policy Analysis and Memory Studies to investigate how states invest in practices of ontological security by creating, remaking and defending their national narratives through historical memory. Solomon recollects how the September 11th attacks and the ensuing War on Terror contributed to his search for approaches which took affects and emotions seriously in IR, and which could help make sense of why some discourses, including foreign policy discourses, resonate with and are accepted by the audience in certain contexts. Finally, Sandrin provides an account of her encounters with the literature on the role of emotions in foreign policy and conveys how these texts helped her make sense of some puzzling aspects of Turkish foreign policy. Jimmy Casas Klausen served as lead editor of this forum. The manuscript passed through the regular double-blind peer review process to insure anonymity.

Research on ontological security in world politics has mushroomed since the early 2000s but seems to have reached an impasse. Ontological security is a conceptual lens for understanding subjectivity that focuses on the management of anxiety in self-constitution. Building especially on Giddens, IR scholars have emphasized how this translates to a need for cognitive consistency and biographical continuity – a security of 'being.' A criticism has been its so-called 'status quo bias,' a perceived tilt toward theorizing investment in the existing social order. To some, an ontological security lens both offers social theoretic foundations for a realist worldview and lacks resources to conceptualize alternatives. We disagree. Through this symposium, we address that critique and suggest pathways forward by focusing on the thematic of anxiety. Distinguishing between anxiety and fear, we note that anxiety manifests in different emotions and leaves room for a range of political possibilities. Early ontological security scholarship relied heavily on readings of Giddens, which potentially accounts for its bias. This symposium re-opens the question of the relationship between anxiety and subjectivity from the perspective of ontological security, thinking with and beyond Giddens. Three contributions re-think anxiety in ontological security drawing on existentialist philosophy; two address limitations of Giddens' approach.