How to Do Things With Words

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1994, Vol 39(2), 225. Reviews the book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992). The author's commendable effort to specify a model of mass opinion formation offers readers an introduction to the prevailing vi

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

Individualism and collectivism

Nos últimos trinta trinta anos, houve profundas mudanças na forma como compreendemos o crime e a justiça criminal. O crime tornou-se um evento simbólico, um verdadeiro teste para a ordem social e para as políticas governamentais, um desafio para a sociedade civil, para a democracia e para os direitos humanos. Segundo David Garland, professor da Faculdade de Direito da New York University, um dos principais autores no campo da Sociologia da Punição e com artigo publicado na Revista de Sociologia e Política , número 13, na modernidade tardia houve uma verdadeira obsessão securitária, direcionando as políticas criminais para um maior rigor em relação às penas e maior intolerância com o criminoso. Há trinta anos, nos EUA e na Inglaterra essa tendência era insuspeita. O livro mostra que os dois países compartilham intrigantes similaridades em suas práticas criminais, a despeito da divisão racial, das desigualdades econômicas e da letalidade violenta que marcam fortemente o cenário americano. Segundo David Garland, encontram-se nos dois países os “mesmos tipos de riscos e inseguranças, a mesma percepção a respeito dos problemas de um controle social não-efetivo, as mesmas críticas da justiça criminal tradicional, e as mesmas ansiedades recorrentes sobre mudança e ordem sociais”1 (GARLAND, 2001, p. 2). O argumento principal da obra é o seguinte: a modernidade tardia, esse distintivo padrão de relações sociais, econômicas e culturais, trouxe consigo um conjunto de riscos, inseguranças e problemas de controle social que deram uma configuração específica às nossas respostas ao crime, ao garantir os altos custos das políticas criminais, o grau máximo de duração das penas e a excessivas taxas de encarceramento.

http://www.scielo.br/pdf/rsocp/n20/n20a15.pdf

The culture of control: crime and social order in contemporary, society

Convincing research programmes often use a variety of data from cases in different contexts; in order to reach a wider understanding, the models and hypothesis of securitization studies have to be applied to broad groups of cases. The research programme of securitization studies is formed around the leading idea of securitization being a social process achieved through speech acts. I argue that by explicating the concept of securitization through illocutionary logic, it can be utilized to study security politics in non-democratic contexts in addition to the favoured liberal democratic one, where the majority of empirical analysis has been conducted so far. In addition, I present clarifications to the concepts of 'audiences' and 'special politics' used in the theory. The theoretical discussion is illustrated with examples from the Chinese political system.

Illocutionary Logic and Strands of Securitization: Applying the Theory of Securitization to the Study of Non-Democratic Political Orders:

There have been numerous calls to include images in the analysis of securitization and the social construction of security issues. The present article answers these calls by examining a longstanding process of securitization in which speech acts have been interwoven with a powerful symbol. Looking into the past and a visualization of possible futures, the article traces the resets of the so-called Doomsday Clock of the Atomic Scientists as securitization/desecuritization moves with a global referent object. While the Scientists’ securitization arguments have pleaded to rationality, the symbol of the Clock has worked to evoke people’s sensibilities. The article reasons that while images and symbols can facilitate, or impede, securitization moves, it is difficult to fathom how images, without anchorage, could bring about securitization that would not have been institutionalized previously.

A Timely Prophet? The Doomsday Clock as a Visualization of Securitization Moves with a Global Referent Object

In its current configuration, Security Studies tends to analyse the relationship between security, resilience and non-security politics in cases where the issue of concern has been securitized, when some issue already has the status function and label of a security issue. The literature consistently frames desecuritization and resilience as processes that take place after an issue has been securitized. The overarching objective of this article is to tell a different sociopolitical story of the connections between desecuritization, resilience and securitization. In order to do this, we present a triangular model of dual relationships among security, resilience and non-security politics. By doing so, we propose a theorization of the relations among these concepts that takes into account not only instances in which desecuritization moves and resiliencization moves follow security, but also instances in which desecuritization and resilience arise before security – when securitization is still brewing. Empiric...

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Security, resilience and desecuritization: multidirectional moves and dynamics

How to do Security with Words. A Grammar of Securitisation in the People’s Republic of China

Introduction 1. Methodology in Critical Security Scholarship 2. Critical Approaches to Security from Europe 3. The Chinese Political Order and the Falungong 4. Take One: The Construction of the Falungong as a Threat to National Security 5. Take Two: The Falungong and Practices of Governing Excessive Freedom 6. Take Three: The Falungong's Struggle for Recognition 7. Heuristic Effects and Dilemmas of Critical Theory Travel

Juha A. Vuori

Papers

Illocutionary Logic and Strands of Securitization: Applying the Theory of Securitization to the Study of Non-Democratic Political Orders:

A Timely Prophet? The Doomsday Clock as a Visualization of Securitization Moves with a Global Referent Object

Security, resilience and desecuritization: multidirectional moves and dynamics

How to do Security with Words. A Grammar of Securitisation in the People’s Republic of China

Critical Security and Chinese Politics: The Anti-Falungong Campaign