The Knowledge Politics of Security in the Anthropocene

• Applicant: Dr. Delf Rothe
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 335616337

Evidence is mounting that the planet has entered a new geological age: the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene names the age in which humanity took control over the planet and pushed the Earth System into a new disequilibrium stage, with potentially catastrophic implications. Several authors in International Relations (IR) have recently argued that the challenge of the Anthropocene requires a fundamental rethinking of international security. The proposed project will add a new perspective to this emerging literature on Anthropocene security, which so far remained at a mere philosophical level. Drawing on ontological and epistemological resources in IR, and its sub-disciplines International Political Sociology (IPS) and Critical Security Studies (CSS), the project seeks to develop an alternative, sociological approach to Anthropocene security. It asks how knowledge of security risks in the Anthropocene is produced, how it is disseminated (or blocked), transferred, challenged and reinterpreted and implemented within the security field.The argument is that planetary change and related security risks do not simply exist out there. Rather, they are being constructed and enacted through the discourses and practices of a whole range of professionals in multiple ways. The proposed project develops a new theoretical framework that allows studying the growing convergence of knowledge and security practices, in what we would call The Knowledge Politics of Security in the Anthropocene. It does so by linking two recent debates within IPS/CSS: practice-theoretical approaches to security on the one hand and approaches of visual securitization on the other. Equipped with this framework the project will study the increasing cooperation of professionals including Earth system scientists, security professionals, policy makers and practitioners that together make planetary changes and related security risks visible, calculable and thereby governable.Empirically, the research project covers new ground by providing a first empirical analysis of the growing fusion of knowledge and security politics in the Anthropocene. It starts from the assumption that approaches to provide security in the Anthropocene are closely linked to three logics of anticipatory action: precaution, preparedness, and preemption. To test this thesis three in-depth case studies will be conducted. A first case study seeks to look at practices of environmental remote sensing as attempt to visualize, predict and prevent future environmental insecurities. A second case study will deal with practices of resilience promotion, i.e. security practices, which accept the radical uncertainty of the world and hence focus on increasing the preparedness of vulnerable people, communities or cities. A third case study will investigate geoengineering projects as a form of preemptive security policy that seeks intervention into the Earth system to steer it in desired directions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants