Fit for purpose? Fitting ontological security studies ‘into’ the discipline of International Relations: Towards a vernacular turn

Stuart Croft, Nick Vaughan-Williams*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The performance of International Relations (IR) scholarship – as in all scholarship – acts to close and police the boundaries of the discipline in ways that reflect power–knowledge relations. This has led to the development of two strands of work in ontological security studies in IR, which divide on questions of ontological choice and the nature of the deployment of the concept of dread. Neither strand is intellectually superior to the other and both are internally heterogeneous. That there are two strands, however, is the product of the performance of IR scholarship, and the two strands themselves perform distinct roles. One allows ontological security studies to engage with the ‘mainstream’ in IR; the other allows ‘international’ elements of ontological security to engage with the social sciences more generally. Ironically, both can be read as symptoms of the discipline’s issues with its own ontological (in)security. We reflect on these intellectual dynamics and their implications and prompt a new departure by connecting ontological security studies in IR with the emerging interdisciplinary fields of the ‘vernacular’ and ‘everyday’ via the mutual interest in biographical narratives of the self and the work that they do politically.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)12-30
Number of pages19
JournalCooperation and Conflict
Volume52
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2017

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016.

Keywords

  • Dread
  • everyday security
  • International Relations
  • ontological security
  • vernacular security

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Development
  • General Social Sciences
  • Political Science and International Relations

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