ABSTRACT
Security and society 116
Forms of violent discrimination 117
Securing the individual: the global politics of human rights 127
Towards universalism 141
Key points 145
Notes 145
Recommended reading 146
Useful web links 146
I love my country far too much to be a nationalist. (unknown)
Undoubtedly the most influential idea to emerge from the conceptual widening of Security Studies in the 1990s by the Copenhagen School was that of societal security. This concept seeks to encapsulate the fact that the process of securitizing issues could sometimes be witnessed when what is thought to be being threatened is neither the state nor individuals within it, but a particular kind of society. ‘Societal security concerns the ability of a society to persist in its essential character under changing conditions and possible or actual threats’ (Waever, Buzan, Kelstrup and Lemaitre 1993: 23). This security is threatened when ‘societies perceive a threat in identity terms’ (ibid.). Hence the heightened political prominence given to the issue of immigration in many Western European countries in the 1990s could be construed as a securitizing of that issue, by nationals fearful of threats to their traditional values and customs.
