INT204: International Security

  Right now with everything going on in the world, one question that arises in every individual’s mind is the idea of security or how secure and safe we are as citizens or individuals through various realms that are economical, cultural,environmental etc. However, understanding security through only a lens isn’t justifiable because what could be a means of security for one could be a threat for others.Current example of this could be the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Image source: www.vox.com/22917719/russia-ukraine-invasion-border-crisis-nato-explained.   Following months of military buildup and brinkmanship on its border with Ukraine, Russia launched a multi-pronged attack on its former Soviet neighbour, threatening to destabilise Europe and drag in the US. A flurry of diplomatic efforts in recent weeks to avert a Russian invasion failed to ease tensions that had been building for months.The escalation of Russia-years-long Ukraine's conflict has sparked Europe's worst security crisi

Source: PTI File Photo Be proud of the men at the borders because it is for them, you are able to sleep peacefully at night in your cozy bed, ‘safe and secure’. Let’s celebrate to our heart’s content as two more ‘LeT terrorist has been killed by our army in Kashmir’s Anantnag district.’ The prime time television shows churning out headlines after headlines about how bravely our army men saved our day by killing the enemies of the state, the unfamiliar faces around me coming together in a moment of passionate joviality to celebrate the heroes of the nation state who saved us another night of peaceful sleep, so I should be filled with pride too? Yes I am for who are the maroon berets keeping secure if not ‘me’. I should be happy too even when this happiness is etched over the bloody bullet ridden body of the Kashmiri insurgents. I must be happy, for the enemy of the state is dead. "Identity is socially bestowed, socially sustained and socially transformed and children learn to play

The struggle to fight for one's rights and modes of self-expression is endless and will continue until humanity's doom. One such fight, with remarkable similarities all across the global societies, is that of the members of the queer community and women for their social acceptance. As Ken Booth contextualizes in his essay, in real life, oftentimes, an aspect of a person's inner personality collides with another aspect of his/her societal identity. Some of these characteristics might conflict with the traditional and majoritarian notions of the said society. Consequently, the person enriched with all those so-called preposterous characteristics is subjected to discrimination. There is no denying that a queer person from the racially uplifted (white) community will be, in a broad sense, provided with better and relatively easier opportunities for self-expression than a possibly similar queer person from the racially "inferior" (black) community. The concept of role

Role theory or role-playing is a crucial aspect of sociological thinking about identity. A typified response to a typified expectation means role. In the formation of this society, the individuals are assigned the role, and the 'social play' proceeds as planned as long as everyone plays their parts. Role-playing consists of individuals adopting the behaviors to the expectations of others. According to Berger: each role has a certain identity, some of them are trivial and others are permanent. He also provides the significance of the role theory, according to him- 'identity is socially bestowed, socially sustained and socially transformed.' The discovery of self is the process of creating and being created. It is simultaneous with the discovery of society. The children learn to play roles, both with respect to 'significant others' and the 'generalized others'. The 'significant others' means the role a person is playing with respect to a particular

A Hermit Crab my friends and I found in the bycatch from an artisanal fisherman's nets while walking one morning along the Chennai Coast.  As Ken Booth had noted while talking about feminist theory, “Making sense of one’s own life has been seen as a way of making sense of the lives of others”. Like he suggested, understanding what goes on in our minds is important to make sense of why and how we analyse something. So now let me apply what Booth said to the subject of my previous blog, the Indo-Sri Lankan Fisheries Conflict. Since I was young, I’d been interested in fish- something that was probably spurred by the first animated movie I remember watching, Finding Nemo. Eventually I would outgrow fish, but my interest in biodiversity remained. Today I’ve come full circle, returning to fish with this blog. Living in Chennai, conflict with Sri Lanka is not really something you can avoid, especially if you read the papers. Maybe if I’d lived in another part of the country, unaffected

  (Source: MIT Techreview.com) The perception of security that I carried since my past has evolved as I grew up. Security (freedom from Threats) was explained to me from a realist perspective, which is traditional or often concerned with the frame of reference of international relations (IR) that explains war and armed conflict. We understand and make sense of reality through a distinct understanding of self, and it evolves with our exposure to the world’s distinct cultures. As Anais Nin mentions “we see things not as they are, but as we are” . I viewed and shaped reality through the frame of reference of ‘me”. Ken Booth in “ Security and Self, Reflection of a fallen realist” addresses the issue of self-formation through social interactions and innate psychological traits that contribute to the development of one's identity. It also connects the notion of one's identity with one's position in society and highlights the need for non-state identities to be represented in the

  My family runs a security firm. Our services range from contracting watchmen for residential buildings, to providing security to film stars and other influential personalities. Upon reading Ken Booth’s paper titled “Security and Self Reflections of a Fallen Realist” and learning about his theory of understanding security as emancipation, I shifted my focus from inspecting the world outside, to introspecting [1] . So here I set out on a quest to become the most influential writer of the 21 st century in the field of Security Studies redefining the very meaning of security! I never thought how we, as a security firm, came to a particular definition of security. Was it thought of from our perspective, that is, from the providers perspective, or the receiver’s perspective? Does being secure mean protection from physical harm; or freedom to do what one wishes to do, when one wishes to do and develop/grow in a way one wants to? Did the receiver want to be ‘protected’ or was the protecti