Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Despite the ‘material turn’ in critical security studies, the wider audience of international relations has yet to recognize objects as meaningful referents in securitization. Scholars have emphasized the way in which materiality is socially constructed, relationally constraining, assertive of agency, and becomes enmeshed in public contestation. However, our understanding of materiality’s place in security remains undertheorized. We must establish a more phenomenological and sociological understanding of what objects do in international politics. I extend Manjikian’s concept of interpretive flexibility and insight from Bigo’s transversal International Political Sociology to propose the interoperability of materiality in international relations. Drawing from der Derian’s conceptualization of new international forces: simulation, surveillance, and speed, I show how drones manifest all three while relying on the same linguistic referent, thus flexible in their interpretation. I show that beyond drone functional and interpretive variability, drones have meaning relational to actor identities and geopolitical location, changing the way that actors experience security in relation to other actors and in relation to drones themselves. Furthermore, I argue that a focus on materiality eschews unproductive debates regarding whether system-, state-, or individual-level analyses are most appropriate for the study of security. Focusing on how “things” mediate power relations allows for an approach to security that analyzes the object of concern across any and each of these levels. Transversal analyses of objects encourage us to consider how issues of materiality contribute to the emancipatory enterprise of critical social theory as we engage with concerns of security among actors at whatever level.