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Question 1

In what ways can it be argued that Buzan's concept of 'societal security' marks a departure from traditional thinking about security?

a) Securing the sustainable development of the state was dependent on societal security as an independent interest that was not secondary or dependent on the other sectors, including the military.

b) Issues of the intrinsic characteristics of the state were brought to the fore by the collapse of communist societies. However, whilst the threats to a state were broadened to recognize alternative referent objects, the response was not.

c) Societal security referred to the sustainable development of traditional patterns of military capabilities. Military threats could be subdivided to include the infrastructural strength, the technology, personnel, the economic base and the political base of the military security sector.

d) Contemporary processes of globalization and society conflict required the development of new conceptual tools beyond the state as the referent object. Security was dependent on factors beyond geographically conceived survival: survival of the state was superseded by survival of the nation (ethnic) state

Question 2

What is the importance of understanding the concepts between the duality of the state and societal security?

a) Societal security was (re-)conceived in light of the processes of integration in western Europe and disintegration in eastern Europe with societal security re-conceptualized in its own right, a key notion of which as the survival of identity.

b) Societal security was conceived as a reflexive response to the processes of disintegration in eastern Europe. Societal security concerned the maintenance of ethnic /cultural identity. Immediate collective identities that constructed society were more important than national identity, conceived as the whole of the cultural parts.

c) Societal security was conceived as a western response to the destabilizing effects of disintegration in which collective identity was ceded to the supra-national level of collective action to preserve western security against the processes of disintegration in the East.

d) The key to the re-conceptualization of the notion of society and societal identity was the notion of survival. If a state loses its sovereignty the society within its borders will not survive. Societal identity is the highest form of social expression of the state: societal identity cannot survive without the state but equally the state cannot survive without a high level of social cohesion.

Question 3

In what ways can it be argued that there is a distinction between society and a social group? Can society be defined?

a) Societal identity (and societal security interest) is the relationship between and the relationship to society, understood as the unit of analysis based the nation. Societal identity is characterized by territorial attachment, continuity and belonging, and is synonymous with citizenship - society is a reality conferred on it by virtue of belonging to the nation in which one resides.

b) Societies are conceived as those units which operate in the nation and the international system where their reactions to threats against their identity have politically significant effects: societal security is concerned with the security of all those groups who invoke a classification of 'we' operating in society.

c) For security analysis society is different from social groups. Societies have their own reality which invariably invokes their right to survive. Societies may be nation states but this does not always refer to a state population.

d) Societal security must be approached as the sum of their constituent individual and social groups. Society is only given reality by its social groups identifying themselves as members of that collectivity. Societies are units constituted by a collective identity

Question 4

What is the relationship between nation and nationalism and identity and ethnicity?

a) Nationality is an extension of ethnicity. A nation state strives for a state of its own and the ethnic group acts as an expression of that motive: politicized ethnic groups will strive for statehood

b) The concept of nation has been underpinned by political bonds: nation and nationalism are the response of the need to legitimize control through the creation of political identity - citizenship. It is this process of political self-identification with the nation which is the key to understanding nationalism.

c) Society most often can be equated with ethno-national group. However, national and ethnic group can be distinguished: where a nation strives for a state, an ethnic group acts within the state as it exists. However, shared ethnicity provides nations with legitimacy over claims to political autonomy and territory.

d) Religion complements nationalism and ethnicity in a nation having the ability to produce 'we' identity which has potential policy consequences. However, religion requires manufacturing to produce conscious self-identification and this re-production can produce conflicting resilient identities and so is not regarded as an identity constant.

Question 5

In what ways might a society be threatened?

a) The economic sector of security produces a homogenizing effect. The processes of globalization, migration and global produce and norms, has resulted in the evolution of traditional identity to make it possible to talk of a global identity. This change is a natural process in which groups unconsciously evolve in response to changing material conditions.

b) Threats to societal security exist when a society regards its collective identity as being under question which may range from the suppression of expression to interference with its ability to reproduce itself across generations, which can occur through sustained application of repressive measures.

c) Military threats to societies in the form of external aggression, mainly through depopulation policies with the intent of preventing collective identities from being reproduced over generations. Military aggression within invaded states is received as a threat and perceived as a concomitant danger to societal identify.

d) Migratory influxes into a host receiving state results in a shift in the composition of the population resulting in horizontal competition or vertical competition. This is not an outright threat to survival but part of wider uncontrollable processes of evolutionary identity in which mutually constitutive cultural exchanges take place within an overall sense of affiliation to the community in which they each reside.

Question 6

To what extent can societal identity be defended militarily?

a) If a threat posed by one group to another is military - particularly when linked to the defense of the historic homeland - armed response is required. At the intra-state level many societal groups have no such means of armed protection and are compelled to employ non-military counter-measures.

b) Intra-state collectives faced with a political or military threat to their identity form their own militia or defensive force as a means of protection. This results in the establishment of quasi-states which may undermine the territorial integrity of the nation

c) Resort to an armed response as a result to a threat to a threat to societal identity results in societal security dynamics being essentially the defense of state sovereignty.

d) None of the above

Question 7

What non-military threats can societies employ to defend their identity?

a) The dilution of culture by adopting the customs of the majority culture and emphasizing intra-state commonalities.

b) Cultural nationalism, the celebration of self-identity, is employed. When emerging as cultural autonomy this involves societal control over those institutions that are responsible for cultural reproduction. When emerging as political nationalism it is more territorially based.

c) The production of a strong cultural response which evolves into political nationalist strategies. Societal groups when threatened equate cultural autonomy with secession: freedom from threat is only possible outside the hegemonic state structures.

d) Strengthening cultural identity with the fostering of cultural nationalist sentiment, through the construction of a strong sense of self-identity. Cultural nationalism can only be facilitated under the conditions of legal-bureaucratic challenges and are not viable under military enforced homogenization

Question 8

What can we understand by a state security dilemma?

a) The separation of rhetorical statements made against the identity of a state from actual policy by policy makers to separate populist appeal from deliberate inflammatory offense, intent not necessarily equated with the latter.

b) Decision makers are forced to address the assimilation of different identities by legal-bureaucratic means without harming the identities of groups.

c) Decision makers are forced to consider the worst-case scenario when faced with a potential threat. Capabilities are equated with intentions requiring countervailing measures be taken which generate a spiral of insecurities.

d) The escalatory dynamic from an actual threat to societal dynamic based on an existential threat of capabilities coupled with intent.

Question 9

In what way might the state security dilemma be applicable to a societal identity?

a) For societal security dilemmas ambiguity can stem from two sides of nationalism; cultural (positive) and ethnic (negative). Ethnic (political) nationalism is often described as more malign linked to state disintegration, whereas cultural nationalism is often seen as benign, working within existing state structures.

b) In practice clear distinctions between cultural nationalism and political nationalism is difficult to make: cultural nationalism may sometimes be compelled to change itself form a solely cultural movement into a political movement and be conflated with political nationalism.

c) Dominant actors may exaggerate threat perceptions with the intent of mobilizing political support which can result in action reaction processes.

d) All of the above

Question 10

In what ways has the Copenhagen School concept of societal security been criticized as an analytical tool?

a) Charge: Reification. Societies are not objective realities but fluid, continuously being constructed and re-constructed which makes it difficult to discuss with reference to a single societal identity.
Answer: But once constructed societies may temporarily be fixed. Societal security can be useful for accounting for specific events in a specific time.

b) Charge: Who speaks for society? Where state and society coincide, security concerns are articulated by governing bodies or societal representatives. In these cases state security and societal security is interchangeable
Answer: States and societies do not always coincide and the voices of state and societal security interests will be different and minorities may be forced to articulate their concerns outside of the state apparatus.

c) Charge: The danger of voicing societal security. Perceived threats to societal security can be used to legitimize racist and xenophobic political agendas.
Answer: However the danger can be offset against the necessity of the concept to understand what is happening (Waever: 1999: 337).

d) All of the above.

Oxford University Press, Online Resource Centre, Chapter 10.

Chapter 10

Instructions