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Introduction
At a time of acute sensitivity to questions of social dislocation, economic inequity and political upheaval, the Globalism Institute is committed to rethinking the relationship between the global and the local. The Institute's primary intellectual task is to understand the processes of change and continuity in order to think through cultural-political questions about sustainable living in a globalizing world. In particular, it is concerned to facilitate and enhance activities of cultural dialogue across the continuing and positive boundaries of cultural diversity in the world today. This entails responding to key political issues of the new century across all levels of community and polity: from the remaking of institutions of global governance and global civil society through to the reconstitution of the nation-state and the reformations of local regions and communities. It entails working across the lines of critical theory, applied research and political debate. We begin with the place in which we live and seek to draw lines of co-operation and reciprocal connection with others—locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. The Globalism Institute is currently the convener of the 'Sources of Insecurity' network.
Introduction
Sources of Insecurity Network
Key Questions
The Sources of Insecurity Network
In response to a common concern with the sources of conflict, locally and globally, a large group of researchers from Australia in conjunction with collaborative international partners from China, Fiji, Finland, France, India, Malaysia, Norway, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, The
Netherlands, the UK, and the USA have come together to form the Sources of Insecurity network.
The Globalism Institute (RMIT),
in conjunction with individuals, local
centresand global institutes,
is convening this network in the humanities and social
sciences on the question of security, local
and global.
We intend to go beyond the question of identifying immediate threats to examining
the deeper sources of political, military and cultural
insecurity from the local and regional to the national and global. This
we argue will
provide a stronger basis for understanding the origins
of conflict and violence in the world today, and thus for grounding policy-decisions
in
relation to national security. Individually and collectively,
members of the network will approach key questions to uncover the sources
of insecurity.
It cannot be stressed too strongly that this web-based report
draws on the writing and input of many participants in the network, and
is in every sense an outcome of the Sources of Insecurity network’s
collaborative enterprise.
Key Questions
The following questions guide the endeavours of the Sources of Insecurity network.
- 1. What are the sources of human insecurity in the contemporary globalizing world?
- 2. What are the foundations for sustainable human security in the context of globalization?
- 3. What are the principles of sustainable human security?
- 4. How can sustainable human security be rebuilt under the intensifying pressures of globalization and social change?
1. What are the sources of human insecurity in the contemporary globalizing world?
Our key focus here involves examining the local-global context of a range of polities and communities under threat across the ‘Arc of Insecurity’. They range from the so-called ‘failing states’ and polities-communities in the aftermath of widespread violence or war to those polities-communities in the Global South either experiencing increasing human insecurity, despite the absence of the immediate pressures of violence or war, or seeking to ameliorate emerging conditions before they take hold.
Subsidiary questions:
• What are the dominant patterns of human insecurity and conflict in the world today, and to what extent do they relate to processes of globalization? • How do states come to be defined as ‘failed’ or ‘failing’ states? • Are there forms of structural insecurity and violence that go unrecognized by the current emphasis on military security? • How important are political, military, economic cultural, psychological, and environmental factors in generating conditions of insecurity and conflict? • What are the new conflicts, inequalities, and exclusions generated by the processes of economic globalization and economic reform? • How do the interests of organized crime, corruption and gangsterism relate to the emergence or accentuation of new forms of violence? • To what extent are the conditions of contemporary insecurity and conflict framed culturally?
2. What are the foundations for sustainable human security in the context of globalization?
As the other side of the first concern about the sources of insecurity, our work involves developing the interpretative bases for more adequately debating how in practical terms the conditions of human security might best be sustained or revitalized under different circumstances, including when countries are depicted as being governed by ‘failing states’. Here the emerging literature on global governance is instructive, but still partial.
Subsidiary questions:
• What kinds of governance are possible across the various arenas from the local to the global and how might they most productively enhance security? • How should these various levels of governance be best related? • What is the relationship between the nature of domestic political regimes and global security? • Are some political regimes more effective than others in resolving or managing conflicts? • When is international military intervention necessary and when is it counterproductive? • What are the most efficacious means of post-violence reconstruction? • How effective are the various means of post-violence reconciliation such as international criminal courts, truth commissions, bureaus of missing persons and economic reconstruction initiatives? • Have the language and policies of human security depoliticized social and economic governance?
3. What are the principles of sustainable human security?
Here our emphasis is on developing an interpretative-ethical framework to interrogate the dominant understandings of security, including the concept of ‘human security’ itself, and to elaborate the ethical principles upon which sustainable practices can be built.
Subsidiary questions:
• What are the key ethical underpinnings of human security? • When do outsiders have a responsibility to protect or support insecure others? • When do outsiders have a right to intervene, and what are the limits on that intervention?
Engaging such questions entails standing back from the exigencies of practice to take an analytical and critical stance on what it means. Here our work will engage with key international scholars.
4. How are the conditions of sustainable security to be secured under conditions of immediate pressure and conflict?
In other words, we want to ask ‘what is to be done?’ What are the implications for practice of a more thorough understanding of the sources of insecurity and conditions and principles of sustainable security? This dimension of our work is intended to go beyond the general to the particular, to instances of clear and present danger.
Subsidiary questions:
• How should governments, international organizations and NGOs be responding now given the patterned signs of social, political, cultural and bio-medical breakdown in a particular polity-communities such as the Solomon Islands, Iraq, Afghanistan, to name a few? • On what activities and support processes should the emphasis of intervening bodies be placed in these circumstances? • What should be the role of institutions of global governance, including the United Nations, in current situations of continuing violence such as Iraq? • What kinds of relations should be developed between levels of governance—global, regional, national and local—in dealing with contemporary situations where postwar reconstruction is under pressure and threatening to break-down?
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