Since the infamous events of 9/11, the fear of terrorism and the determination to strike back against it has become a topic of enormous public debate. The 'war on terror' discourse has developed not ...only through American politics but via other channels including the media, the church, music, novels, films and television, and therefore permeates many aspects of American life. Stuart Croft suggests that the process of this production of knowledge has created a very particular form of common sense which shapes relationships, jokes and even forms of tattoos. Understanding how a social process of crisis can be mapped out and how that process creates assumptions allows policy-making in America's war on terror to be examined from new perspectives. Using IR approaches together with insights from cultural studies, this 2006book develops a dynamic model of crisis which seeks to understand the war on terror as a cultural phenomenon.
The development of ontological security studies, for example by Mitzen, Steele, and Berenskoetter and Giegerich, has been an important innovation in the field. However, by focusing on the level of ...the state rather than that of the individual, this new tradition is somewhat different from the intellectual origins of ontological security in sociology and psychology. Drawing on those disciplines, I argue that the key focus should be on the understandings of individuals about their own security, intersubjectively constructed. Ontological security can be understood in terms of the need to construct biographical continuity, to construct a web of trust relations, to act in accordance with self-integrity, and to struggle against ontological insecurity, or dread, in Kierkegaard's sense. I then take and apply this framework to understand the process by which British Muslims have become insecuritized (understood as a term through which dominant power can decide who should be protected and who should be designated as those to be controlled, objectified, and feared) in the period since 9/11.
Securitizing Islam examines the impact of 9/11 on the lives and perceptions of individuals, focusing on the ways in which identities in Britain have been affected in relation to Islam. ...'Securitization' describes the processes by which a particular group or issue comes to be seen as a threat, and thus subject to the perceptions and actions which go with national security. Croft applies this idea to the way in which the attitudes of individuals to their security and to Islam and Muslims have been transformed, affecting the everyday lives of both Muslims and non-Muslims. He argues that Muslims have come to be seen as the 'Other', outside the contemporary conception of Britishness. Reworking securitisation theory and drawing in the sociology of ontological security studies, Securitizing Islam produces a theoretically innovative framework for understanding a contemporary phenomenon that affects the everyday lives of millions.
In order to improve conservation outcomes translocation or reintroduction of individuals may be necessary. When song learning birds are translocated, changes in the cultural diversity of song ...repertoires, or abnormal vocalizations, in the new population can be a problem. We monitored song production over 8 years in a reintroduced population of the cirl bunting (Emberiza cirlus). Chicks were removed from nests in Devon, UK, between 2006 and 2011, translocated at 6 days old to be hand‐reared and released in Cornwall, UK. Recordings at the release site in 2011 showed a significantly reduced population repertoire and individuals sang abnormal song types compared to the source populations in Devon. However, recordings in 2019, showed population song repertoire had reached the level of source populations of similar size, and song types were species typical. Our study shows that species can recover from a cultural bottleneck and suggests that, for some song learning birds, if translocation of nestlings is necessary it may not lead to long‐term problems for communication and thus population persistence. For future translocations of nestlings, we recommend that efforts are made to provide tutoring to enable song learning. This may be achieved by providing recordings, but may also include providing adult song tutors. In addition, playback of “normal” songs to translocated populations may aid in development of species typical song repertoires, although care must be taken that this is not disturbing the reintroduced birds.
(a) Locations of cirl bunting populations sound recorded for this study, points reflect the center of the location. Location 1 is the reintroduced population in Cornwall. Locations 4 and 5 are near each other but are separated by water. Inset photo shows a cirl bunting (Ben Andrew rspb-images.com). (b) The relationship between the number of males recorded and the number of different song types in the population (location of population on map in label brackets). Confidence interval and fit line displayed. ▲ Source, ◯ Reintroduced 2011, * Reintroduced 2019.
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.
This article examines the evolution of threat narratives in the age of terror, focusing on the United Kingdom. The analysis is broken down into two sections. The first part of the article presents ...four distinct and yet overlapping notions of the threats which have influenced both the West, and more specifically the UK, in debates about counterterrorism since 9/11. The four threat narratives—Al-Qaeda as a central organization; decentralized terror networks; home grown; and finally apocalyptic threats—have all been used to inform counter terror measures in the West. The second section of the article argues that terrorism has evolved strategically, and is hybridized owing to the security environment—interpenetrated by globalization, digital media and information communication technologies—in which it occurs. The article concludes with a preliminary discussion of some strategic and operational themes which have influenced the form and character of terrorism and insurgency, exploring how they impact on the ways in which threats are constituted and countered, illustrating that what is new maybe the nature of our own fears.
Elevated plasma von Willebrand factor (VWF) levels are associated with coronary artery disease, although the precise mechanism for this is unclear. Recently, four linked dimorphisms in the VWF gene ...promoter were demonstrated to influence plasma VWF level. We conducted a case–control study of 525 acute myocardial infarction (MI) cases and 451 control subjects, all aged 75 years, to assess the potential contribution of two of these dimorphisms (−1185 G/A and −1051 A/G) to the risk of MI. The frequency of the −1185A/−1051G haplotype, associated with elevated VWF levels, was similar in the case and control groups, yielding a haplotypic odds ratio for MI of 0·93 (95% CI 0·77, 1·12, P = 0·43), and there was no significant association between the −1185A/−1051G haplotype and the risk of MI in any subgroup analysed. We therefore conclude that possession of the −1185A/−1051G haplotype does not confer an increased risk for MI.
An exploration of theoretical concerns raised by Marie Gillespie et all in, "Shifting Securities," considers how the nature of an increasingly more pluralist & complex British society could be ...ruptured by conflicting security narratives. Three ways the study challenges securitization theory are considered. First, it is contended that no analysis of "Shifting Securities" can be understood as linear. Second, any such analysis requires a "reassessment of who might be considered conceptually to be a securitizing actor." Although it is presupposed that only the government can perform the securitizing move, other actors, including policy-makers & news producers, could have enough social power to allow them to perform certain securitizing functions. Third, "Shifting Securities" presents a more complex representation of deeply empowered citizens-cum-audiences than the under-theorized role of the audience presented in traditional securitization theory. It is concluded that "Shifting Securities" sharpens the focus on theory in a political way that securitizes Britain's counter-terrorist discourse & suggests that "the discourse itself provides an existential threat to contemporary (multicultural) British society. J. Lindroth
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