Description
Security and space arguably are amongst the most important concepts in politics and IR. As scholarly research has advanced the premise that security is not objective, but rather something that humans (re)produce, discussions have moved to interrogate security ‘by’ and ‘for whom’, in which context and for what purposes; with implications for what we mean by ‘security’. Academics have differentiated between state and people-centred, top-down and bottom-up, elite and vernacular, Western-centric and post-colonial approaches, amongst others. Meanwhile, intellectual ruminations about space have produced a multiplicity of theoretical and/or analytical categories. Rather than an absolute phenomenon, scholars have argued for linear, relative and relational ontologies, as well as physical/material, social, lived, or symbolic approaches to space. Both security and space are embedded in how we make sense of political phenomena, like identity, power, authority and order. Yet their conceptual and empirical interplay is too often overlooked.
This paper argues for the need to revise the ontology of security and space to centre their interplay at the core of the political. In their separate ways, security and space are open-ended processes impacting on and ingrained in relations. By incorporating some of the ontological arguments about space in the work of Doreen Massey to security and, on the other hand, applying the logic of Securitisation Theory to space, it is possible to animate debates about how political realities come into being. To illustrate this theoretical endeavour, I will explore several empirical examples in the Middle East, where the interplay can enhance our understanding of politics and, potentially, in the broader Global South.
