學術活動與計劃-研究計畫

This project aims to reflect upon the human security enterprise from a critical angle, exploring human security as a terrain contested by a variety of state and non-state actors with competing approaches to securing human beings.

Human security has attracted considerable attention in academic and practitioner circles as an alternative to traditional, statist understandings of security. Its proponents argue that the primary referent object ought to be the individual rather than the state (Alston 1992; Boutros-Gali 1992; Lauren 1998; Moore 1996; Morsink 1998; UN 1995, 1999; UNDP 1997), and broad versions of the concept expand the agenda of security to include societal, cultural, economic, and environmental issues as well as military and political threats (UNDP 1994; Nef 2002). Much of the literature on human security has focused on either debating whether and how the approach can be operationalised as an analytical framework and practical policy guide (Hampson et al. 2002; Khong 2001; Macfarlane and Khong 2006; Mack 2001, 2005; Paris 2001; Peou 2008; Tow et al 2000), or applying the framework by investigating the human security implications of a variety of issues, including economic globalisation (Kay 1997; O’Neill 1997; Swatuk and Vale 1999; Thomas 2001; Willett 2001), humanitarian intervention (ICISS 2001; Holzgrefe and Keohane 2003), nuclear weapons (Abraham 1999), urbanisation (Cocklin and Keen 2000), and migration (Schmeidl 2002).

This literature provides an important challenge to the state-centric orthodoxy of conventional international security by taking the survival and wellbeing of individuals into account. At the same time, however, it has tended to approach disputes over the meaning of human security and how it should be implemented in practice as obstacles to the development of human security as an effective field of study or policy agenda, rather than a field of political struggle that is itself in need of explanation. The success of the human security framework has brought new divisions among those advocating it; state and non-state actors have adopted the idea of human security in selective ways, with states, development agencies and NGOs – as well as groups and factions within these organisations – promoting competing understandings of the concept and emphasizing specific components of the framework (Hampson et al. 2002; Khong 2001; Paris 2001). How should these differences be explained, and implications do they have for how human beings are secured ‘on the ground’?

This project will respond to this challenge by comparing and contrasting the construction and operationalisation of human security by civil societies, governments and wider policy communities in Europe and East Asia (e.g. China and Japan). In treating the meaning and threat agenda of human security as socially constructed, it is situated within recent critical scholarship in IR and security studies. This body of work has argued security threats are socially constructed rather than having a fixed or given identity as security problems (Abrahamsen 2005; Buzan et al. 1998; Campbell 1992; Emmers 2003; Elbe 2006; Buzan 2006), and particular ways of conceptualising and pursuing security are derived from broader social conditions and commitments, including worldviews, political theories, interests, and identities (Booth 1991, 1996, 2005, 2007; Doty 1998; McDonald 2008; Rothchild 1995; Wyn Jones 1999). These arguments have supported a movement in security studies away from an exclusive focus on understanding and managing threats to include research into the construction of ‘security’ and ‘security threats’ in particular contexts, and the implications of framing issues within particular logics of security. From this perspective, human security can only be fully understood if we attend to the ways in which it is defined and operationalised by specific agents in particular localities. Key questions here include how it becomes possible to articulate particular notions of human security, why are they advocated in particular circumstances, and makes them legitimate and persuasive within particular academic and policy communities.

In investigating the politics behind diverse conceptions of human security, the project contributes to filling a gap in the human security literature. It will also connect with debates in that literature about governance in human security issues by comparing and contrasting the implementation of competing human security agendas. Thus far, much discussion of human security governances has been concerned with whether the state is vital for the realisation of human security, or part of the problem (Bienefeld 1995; Griffin 1995; Axworthy 2001; McRae and Hubert 2001; Thomas and Tow 2002; Bellamy and McDonald 2002). States are often essentialised in these arguments as actors with uniform identities and interests. This project, by contrast, begins from the basic assumption is that actors in international relations – including but not limited to international institutions, regional organisations, states, NGOs and civil societies – conceptualise human security differently depending on their respective self-identities, and these self-identities are dynamically constructed, rather than given, evolving in specific political contexts but also shaped by historical legacies. By approaching states, international organisations and civil society actors as agents with socially constructed identities and interests, this project will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of their role in human security governance. Attention to the complexity and contestation within human security discourse and the presence of non-Western voices will also provide an opportunity for reassessing claims that the emancipatory potential of the human security agenda has been undermined through its cooption by a neocolonial, neoliberal project led by Western liberal states (Chandler & Hynek 2011; Duffield 2001, 2007, 2010).

One of the most prominent divisions in human security discourse has been between the West and East Asia (Acharya 2001; Fukushima 2008). This project will accordingly focus on comparing and contrasting human security discourses in the EU and East Asia. The EU, its member states, and East Asian countries such as Japan and China, while speaking on human security, have referred to different notions of human security that have different connotations and are lead in different practical directions. In the case of the EU, scholars such as Ian Manners (2002, 2006, 2012) Thomas Diez (2005), Michelle Pace (2007) or Henrik Larsen (2014) adopt the concept of ‘normative power’ to grasp the EU’s identity, role and practice in world politics. The EU and its member states have agreed a series of norms, principles and shared beliefs that are legally binding commitments such as democracy, rule of law, social justice and respect for human rights. The principle of human rights is closely linked to the policy of human security. EU member states, when dealing with development aid in the developing states, stipulate conditionality clauses that bind the recipients to practice to ethical human rights. This focus of human rights is also embedded in EU member states’ understanding of the conflict prevention, conflict resolution and reconstruction, resulting in more intrusive armed responses aimed at state-building, humanitarian intervention, and peace enforcement. In contrast to the EU, China and Japan frame the concept of human security differently in accordance with their respective self-identities. China’s self-identity as a developing state emerging from a ‘century of humiliation’, and Japan’s self-identity as an anti-militarist state have resulted in the both Chinese and Japanese officials as well as scholars framing the concept of human security in terms of ‘freedom from want’ to various degrees.[1] This focus of non-intervention and development has become embedded in both China and Japan’s understanding of a number of concepts that closely relate to human security and also their practice, which include UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) on the one hand, and official development assistance (ODA) programs on the other.

Three agendas have been prioritised so far in the framework of human security despite its original radical promise, namely: peacebuilding, pariah weapons, and development. In investigating the operationalisation of contrasting conceptions of human security, this project will focus mainly on situations of violent conflict, incorporating a manageable range of different issues across the aforementioned agendas. On the empirical level, this project will employ both qualitative and quantitative methods approach to explore the dimensions of relationship between identities and ideas of human security, and between policy-making and policy-outcome of humanitarian intervention and peace enforcement by EU, its member states, and the major Asian human security actors. This will be done through single-case and comparative analysis. In the qualitative analysis process-tracing will be used to reveal the differences in human security policy informed by specific self-identities. In addition this project comprises quantitative analysis to investigate the outcomes of those human security policies. Through building a large data set, this analysis will assess whether human security policies are carried out in different ways by the EU, Japan, and China and the relationship between the rise of distinctive effects on societies in post-conflict reconstructions and reconciliations in term of concepts of ‘freedom from want’, ‘freedom from fear’ and normative power. The relationship between foreign aid policies by China, Japan, EU, and its member states and whether they produce different outcomes concerning social stability, e.g. increase or decrease in frequency of social riots or civil war, will also be assessed. Triangulating our findings in these was will offer us to be more confident of our arguments and enables us to offer a more valid assessment whether a causal link can be made.

In short, this project upholds the belief that human security still provides an avenue for the emancipatory approach to international relations. Human security offers the possibility for critical IR to engage with policymaking and seek ways to pursue an emancipatory agenda that could have a real impact on people’s lives today. Nevertheless, if human security framework would live up its promises to empower the individuals in developing, weak or unstable countries, a critical, pluralist or hybrid security agenda ought to be sincerely adopted. A critical engagement with human security can also highlight how and why a state’s human security policy has changed overtime, whether for emancipatory ends or otherwise.

 

The project is located in the research areas Politics and International Relations, International Development, Peace and Conflict Studies, as well as Area Studies. By comparing and contrasting the implementation of competing human security agendas, the research team aims to provide a deeper account of governance in human security issues in Europe and East Asia. Through disseminating the research findings the project will:

• offer new insights into the studies of human security that will benefit academia, practitioners, the business community, media, and the general public;
• foster academic and policy debate on the relationships between human security, identity, governance, conflict and development, and around the way in which public, private and civil society actors in Europe, Asia and elsewhere might develop their own thinking on human security and insecurity;
• facilitate decision-making processes concerning the implementation of the human security agenda for conflict prevention, management, resolution, and peacekeeping among academic and practitioner circles in Europe and Asia;
• provide scholars, practitioners, the business community, media, and the general public with a more complete and nuanced understanding of human security governance;
• strengthen existing academic ties between The Netherlands and Taiwan.A workshop will be held at National Taiwan University in Taipei on January 21st-22nd 2016 (dates are subject to change) to publically disseminate the initial research findings from this project. After the workshop in Taipei, the research team will organise a research workshop to be held in conjunction with the 2016 International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention (this year held in Atlanta, Georgia, March 16th-19th 2016), expanding the comparative element of the project to Brazil, South Africa, Turkey and India. The papers written by the research team will be published as one edited volume and one special issue of an international journal. The submission deadline for the final manuscript is anticipated to be July 2016. Potential publication outlets include Routledge (‘Interventions’ or ‘New Security Studies’ series), and a special journal issue such as International Studies Quarterly or Review of International Studies. NWO and MOST will be acknowledged as the primary funding body of this research in the final publication. We would use the ISA to set up meeting with potential publishers to discuss our publication plan.

[1] Nonetheless, Japan’s human security policy has more and more evolved and sought to address freedom from fear concerns by providing development aid for humanitarian assistance and reconstruction projects in post-conflict states.

計畫名稱：「認同與爭議中的人類安全視野：歐洲與東亞戰後重建與和解的途徑」

計畫主持人：徐斯勤