Developing Critical Security Studies from Doha
Sami Hermez
Critical security, as any discourse that takes a critical turn, is meant to speak against the grain, to be contrapuntal; a way to write and think from the margins with the intent of building a discourse that is itself multiple and wide ranging. To think of (in)security contrapuntally means to take seriously a combination of disciplinary backgrounds, some of which have traditionally tackled questions of security while others have only dealt with the concept tangentially. Scholars often enter spaces and fields that are not traditionally theirs and encounter “experts” with a level of insecurity. Yet, when working with notions of “security,” we are “experts” not only because each of us lives the effects of security and insecurity, but because security experts and practitioners fundamentally have no idea what they are doing, approaching life as trial by error.
At the Qatar Hub of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences Critical Security Studies (ACSS) working group, scholars are engaged in thinking about issues of security and insecurity in ways that pick up from ideas raised in the Beirut School Manifesto. Our explorations are meant to take us out of our comfort zone in the way we normally conceive of and understand security frames and questions. We are a diverse group representing many disciplines coming to think and produce together. In this first roundtable by some members of the Qatar Hub of Critical Security Studies, participants were asked to submit their reflections on the question of security and insecurity. The prompt was as follows: What does the term security mean to you, and what comes to mind when you think of security? How would you approach it given your interests and disciplinary background, especially thinking from our region? How might you “pluralize” the discourse on security or what thematic directions might you want to pursue? And finally, what attracts you to a hub related to Critical Security Studies emerging from the region?
Together, this roundtable approaches security from other critical traditions, whether critical border studies, critical migration studies, critical feminist studies or others. Noha Aboueldahab outlines the study of critical security from within Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and the way this approach can pluralize human security. She offers us a way to think of (in)security dynamics through a juridical lens and opens up the conversation on solidarity and its politics. Clovis Bergère is invested in exploring how practices and discourses of security and securitization intersect with changing media infrastructures, technologies, and practices. Media, thus, becomes a crucial node to consider. How is security mediated and how does this contribute to securitization? He also calls on us to think of how young people—youth—are accounted for in security discourses. Bergère’s piece also allows us to think beyond our particular region and to consider South-South relations.
Ammar Shamaileh focuses on the question of what makes people choose insecurity? What could compel a person to take on the risks associated with protest when it is unlikely that their participation in such protests will be pivotal? Protest is risky, he says. On the other hand, Diala Hawi, bringing in social psychological approaches to the study of security, suggests that security, as a matter of perception, may indeed be about change despite the risks. And she asks us to consider how we understand perceptions to open up the debate on how security is defined. In her work, as in other pieces from this roundtable, the notion of wellbeing emerges as an idea that sticks to security.
Zahra Babar’s essay, in a similar vein to Aboueldahab, calls for putting Critical Security Studies in conversation with other critical as approaches in border and migration studies. She argues for an attention to the ambiguities of security, and for a focus on narratives and experiences of migration to draw out these ambiguities. Haya Al-Noaimi, like Babar, calls on us to focus on the work of narrative, but also, and more specifically, affect, as a way to open a space to think security differently. She comes to this from an intersectional feminist approach, highlighting questions of gender, race, and class as she thinks about society in some of the Arab Gulf states. Finally, Torsten Menge offers a fitting conclusion to this collection by connecting the various strands of the roundtable. In his piece, he draws our attention to the future orientation of security and asks us to consider what it would look like for a politics to not rely on a ‘security’ frame or on the idea that we need to master the future.
As we can see from these diverse views, security’s malleability allows it to seep into our lives, entering every space, but remaining ambiguous—an ambiguity that is open to manipulation, as several pieces imply. Together, this roundtable conversation highlights the themes and interests of some of the members of the Qatar Hub at this juncture.
references
Abboud, Samer, Omar S. Dahi, Waleed Hazbun, Nicole Sunday Grove, Coralie Pison Hindawi, Jamil Mouawad, and Sami Hermez. “Towards a Beirut School of Critical Security Studies.” Critical Studies on Security 6, no. 3 (October 2018): 273—295. Read More
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sami Hermez is the Director of the Liberal Arts Program and associate professor in residence of anthropology at Northwestern University in Qatar. Hermez's research concerns include the study of social movements, the state, the future, memory, violence, and critical security in the Arab World.
citation
To cite: Hermez, S. (ed.) Developing Critical Security Studies from Doha, Doha: #IAS_NUQ Press/ Beirut: Arab Council for the Social Sciences, 2024.