The Knowledge Politics of Security in the Anthropocene
Final Report Abstract
The research project “The knowledge politics of security in the Anthropocene” studied how discourses and practices of security are changing under conditions of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene, derived from the Greek “anthropos” (human), refers to a new geological epoch, which is defined by the human impact on the planet. Authors in International Relations and beyond have argued that the challenges of the Anthropocene would require completely new ways of approaching security. The project advanced this emerging literature, which previously remained at a mere philosophical level, by adding a new, sociological perspective on Anthropocene security. Rather than asking how security should look like, it asked how existing discourses and practices of security changed in reaction to novel threats, risks, and uncertainties in the Anthropocene. For this, the project traced how knowledge of security risks in the Anthropocene is produced, how it is disseminated (or blocked), transferred, challenged, as well as implemented or contested within the security field. The rationale for posing these questions was this: The more security becomes concerned with a range of anonymous and complex risks – rather than clearly identifiable military threats – the more security actors must rely on specialized knowledge and related expert practices. Bringing together the literature on expert politics and epistemic practices in IR with the literature on global visual politics, the project developed several concepts to theorize the (changing) relation between knowledge production, security, and governance in the Anthropocene. Concepts such as visual assemblage, visual objects, and socio-technical imaginaries allow studying how heterogenous experts use visual technologies to render planetary changes and related security risks visible, calculable, and thereby governable. They enable one to trace how the introduction of digital technologies change the composition of expert networks as well as the epistemic objects – from climate-induced migration to geoengineering or environmental conflicts – brought about by these networks. Equipped with this conceptual framework, the project studied the convergence of security and knowledge politics in three different contexts. A first case study looked at practices of satellite remote sensing as attempts to predict and prevent future risks resulting from anthropogenic environmental change. For this, we analyzed the paradigmatic case of the European Earth observation Program Copernicus. Our research revealed that the development of this program was shaped by a discourse of environmental security from the very beginning. However, by zooming in on the situated practices within the Copernicus actor-network we were also able to show that it is marked by several competing logics, internal fissures, and failures – or what we called the messiness of surveillance. Both critics and proponents of digital surveillance often assume that these technologies would simply work. However, as our project has shown, quite often they don’t. A second case study dealt with practices of resilience promotion – that is: security practices, which accept the radical uncertainty of the world and hence focus on increasing the preparedness of vulnerable communities. As our research has shown, the expert networks and knowledge practices in the field of resilience promotion differ considerably from those in the other two cases. Here, local NGOs and administrations draw on various visual practices, such as participatory mapping or design thinking, to mobilize local, tacit forms of knowledge and the self-help potential of vulnerable communities. Yet, our project also identified an inherent contradiction of resilience as a security logic between control and emergence. On the one hand, resilience projects embrace the agency and liveliness of security subjects. On the other hand, however, they need to control this liveliness to make sure that it unfolds in a desired manner. A third case study analyzed geoengineering projects as a form of preemptive security that seeks intervention in the Earth system to steer it in desired directions. A first finding was that public and political discourses on climate engineering crucially revolve around images and other visual artefacts. These are used not only to anticipate the future development of geoengineering technologies but also to imagine the potential global orders in which these technologies would be deployed. Through interviews and ethnographic field research, the project revealed how international experts draw on such images and related visual practices to establish geoengineering as a global “object of expertise”.
Publications
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(2020). Europas Blick auf die Erde: EU Copernicus und die visuelle Versicherheitlichung von Umwelt, Heck, Axel and Gabi Schlag (eds.) Visualität & Weltpolitik: Praktiken des Zeigens und Sehens in den Internationalen Beziehungen, Wiesbaden: VS Springer, 181-214
Rothe, Delf
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(2020). Governing the End Times? Planet Politics and the Secular Eschatology of the Anthropocene, in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 48 (2): 143-164
Rothe, Delf
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(2020). Jellyfish Encounters: Knowledge, Technology and Security in the Anthropocene Ocean, in Critical Studies on Security, 8 (2): 145-159
Rothe, Delf
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(2021). Digital Humanitarianism and the Visual Politics of the Refugee Camp: (Un)Seeing Control, in International Political Sociology, 15 (1): 41-62
Rothe, Delf; Fröhlich, Christiane and Miguel Rodriguez Lopez
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(2021). International Relations in the Anthropocene: New Agendas, New Agencies, New Approaches (Textbook), Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave
Chandler, David; Müller, Franziska and Delf Rothe (eds.)
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(2022). International Relations in the Anthropocene: Knowledge, Governance and Security (in Spanish), in Relaciones Internacionales, 50 (anniversary special issue), 107-126
Chandler, David; Müller, Franziska and Delf Rothe
