Security in the anthropocene: Environment, ecology, escape

• Published in: European journal of international relations Vol. 23; no. 2; pp. 292 - 314
• Main Author: Fagan, Madeleine
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.06.2017; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Anthropocene; Culture; Dominance; Ecological studies; Ecology; Ecosystems; Environmental security; Escape; International relations; Politics; Anthropocene; security; environmental security; human security; ecological security; International Relations theory
• ISSN: 1354-0661; 1460-3713
• DOI: 10.1177/1354066116639738

The anthropocene poses a set of conceptual challenges for the study of security in the discipline of International Relations. By complicating the distinction between human and nature, the concept of the anthropocene puts into question one of the key organizing logics of upon which much security discourse is built: what would a security look like whose subject was not modern man? This article offers a reading of environmental and ecological approaches to security as two potential avenues for rethinking security in the context of the anthropocene. This is done in order to demonstrate the dominance and centrality of the nature/culture binary for conceptualizing the environment, ecology and security. Such a common philosophical horizon problematizes and undermines the scope for a critical reorientation of security thinking from either perspective. Drawing on R.B.J. Walker’s concept of the politics of escape, the article suggests that in attempting to escape the nature–culture binary, the move to ecology in fact, simultaneously reinscribes and obscures this distinction, thereby limiting the potential of the concept of the anthropocene to offer a critical framework with which to analyse the interplay of nature and culture in contemporary security politics.