Constructing Ontological Insecurity: The Insecuritization of Britain's Muslims

Abstract

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.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For comments on earlier papers and drafts I thank Chris Browning, Rita Floyd, Jonathan Githens-Mazer, Lene Hansen, Pertti Joenniemi, and four insightful referees of this journal.

Notes

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Ibid., p. 42.

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Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (note 2), p. 37.

Ibid., p. 36.

Ibid., p. 37.

Ibid., p. 37.

Brent J. Steele, ‘Ontological Security, Shame and “Humanitarian” Action’, Paper presented at the 2004 ISA Conference, Montreal, March 2004, available at http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/7/4/3/7/pages74370/p74370-1.php.

Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (note 2), p. 37.

Ibid, p. 44.

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Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir is a global political grouping with membership of around one million, committed to the recreation of a caliphate. There is much debate about its relationship to violence.

Imran Waheed, quoted in ‘Thousands Attend Muslim Conference’, BBC News, 24 August 2003.

Commission on Racial Equality, The Decline of Britishness: A Research Study (London: Commission on Racial Equality, May 2006), p. 10.

Ibid., p.8.

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Martin Amis, cited in Laura Clark and Tahira Yaqoob, ‘Martin Amis Launches Fresh Attack on Muslim Faith Saying Islamic States Are “Less Evolved”’, Daily Mail, 18 October 2007.

See Jonathan Githens-Mazer and Robert Lambert, Islamophobia and Anti Muslim Hate Crime: A London Case Study (Exeter: European Muslim Research Centre, January 2010).

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By ‘shutyerface’ on the Yahoo Answers board, July 2007, available at http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070720043607AAbSbpy&show=7 (accessed May 2008).

Post by ‘Pistoffman’, male, married with three children, no location entered, profile viewed 4,440 times, post dated 11 September 2009 19:46:24 http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070720043607AAbSbpy&show=7 (accessed September 2009).

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See http://englishdefenceleague.org/ (accessed July 2011).

Commission on Racial Equality, The Decline of Britishness (note 47), p. 10.