Eric Van Rythoven | Carleton University (original) (raw)

Papers by Eric Van Rythoven

Journal of Global Security Studies, Jul 16, 2019

Motivated by the neglect of uncertainty and perverse consequences in constructivist studies of se... more Motivated by the neglect of uncertainty and perverse consequences in constructivist studies of security, this article pursues a reconceptualization of the security dilemma. Approaching the dilemma as a “logic of self-limitation” constituted by choice, uncertainty, and tragedy, the article explores how this logic can be transposed to the constructivist context of securitization theory. The resulting “securitization dilemma” draws renewed attention to the unintended character of social life, highlights how the choice to engage in practices of threat construction are shaped by uncertainty, and shows how the failure to recognize these limitations can have tragic consequences. While the argument aims to broaden the empirical focus of securitization studies to include perverse and unintended consequences, it also looks to engage with the literature's distinctive ethical claim over how speaking security is never a neutral act. Political actors may well be responsible for the security claims they make, but we need to recognize that this responsibility includes the effects of security claims that actors anticipate, as well as those they do not.

International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics

A paradox haunts Lippmann’s critique of democracy running through his early work in Public Opinio... more A paradox haunts Lippmann’s critique of democracy running through his early work in Public Opinion up through The Public Philosophy. Liberal democracies, despite their claim to securing space for human dignity and freedom, can be sites of incredible cruelty. From the racial prejudices cutting through American politics, to the way Americans treated adversaries during war, democracy appeared to do little to vitiate the human propensity to inflict suffering upon others. This article examines Lippmann’s understanding of cruelty as a recurring feature of democracy and how he grappled with the question of how to curb the democratic public’s worst impulses. I argue that while Lippmann offers an expansive understanding of cruelty his analysis continually gravitates towards the role of cruelty in democracy and how the existence of mobs and demagogues represent democracy’s ever-latent potential for cruelty. Exploring his thinking further, I suggest there are at least two distinct views on the...

Research Methods in Critical Security Studies

Global studies quarterly, Oct 1, 2022

ERIS – European Review of International Studies, Dec 17, 2018

Anxiety, hopelessness and debilitating fear, these are some of the emotions that my students have... more Anxiety, hopelessness and debilitating fear, these are some of the emotions that my students have voiced to me when they have explained how their experience and world-view has changed after studying International Relations for some time. They had not expected to find that the majority of scholarship in IR depicted a very sinister view of world politics. Neither did they expect that reading these materials would affect them emotionally and they felt there was something wrong with them as they were reacting in this way. They had come to study IR in order to change the world for the better for the actual people living in this world, instead they were offered sophisticated theorizing about world politics, genocide, global inequalities with very little hope in sight. This left many students confused and disillusioned with the scholarship of IR and also hopeless about the future of the human race. And they came to me for help.

International Political Sociology

Why do public officials sometimes avoid using security claims to frame an issue, even when there ... more Why do public officials sometimes avoid using security claims to frame an issue, even when there are strong incentives and historical precedent for doing so? Efforts to portray indigenous protest as a security issue are a recurring feature of Canada's settler colonial history. Recently, however, a series of public officials have emphatically rejected these kinds of claims. To explain this puzzle, I argue that a growing feeling of unease over the history of settler colonialism has transformed once acceptable security claims into sources of controversy and racism. Generated through diverse social repertoires linked to indigenous-led forms of reconciliation, this unease has resulted in officials facing pressure to distance themselves—through denials, apologies, and euphemisms—from claims that have become increasingly controversial. The result is not a direct end to the securitization of indigenous protest—some figures may actively court controversy, while others can still make thes...

Critical Studies on Security

ABSTRACT While Western reactions to ISIS are commonly situated in a ‘politics of fear’, there has... more ABSTRACT While Western reactions to ISIS are commonly situated in a ‘politics of fear’, there has been surprisingly little reflection on what role fear plays in disciplinary arguments central to International Relations (IR). I argue this absence of reflection can explained by a shared doxa over fear’s mobilising potential in the politics of security. This doxa can be traced to a 19th Century strand of social theorising concerned with mass movements – crowds – which were envisioned as emotionally volatile and prone to manipulation. While subsequent social theorists were skeptical of how these claims reduced crowds to panic politics, scholarship in IR has uncritically reproduced them to argue fear remains a reliable pathway for expanding and intensifying the politics of security. Critical of this reasoning, I argue it leads to a dystopian vision of the politics of fear which obscures a more open and indeterminate politics of emotion.

Security Dialogue, 2015

Despite a growing interest in the role of emotions in world politics, the relationship between em... more Despite a growing interest in the role of emotions in world politics, the relationship between emotion and securitization remains unclear. This article shows that persistent, if sporadic, references to fear and emotion in securitization studies remain largely untheorized and fall outside conventional linguistic and sociological ontologies. The tendency to discuss emotion but deny it ontological status has left securitization theory incoherent. This article offers a theoretical reconstruction of securitization where emotion, specifically collective fears, serve as the locus of an audience’s judgment for the practice of securitization. Yet rather than simply accepting that fear facilitates securitizing moves, the article draws on appraisal theory from psychology to argue that collective fear appraisals are often fragile cultural constructs. The generation of these emotional appraisals is often constrained by the limited symbolic resources of the local security imaginary and how agents...

European Journal of International Relations, 2015

Methodology and Emotion in International Relations, 2019

International Theory

The recent ‘emotion turn’ in international theory is widely viewed as a cutting-edge development ... more The recent ‘emotion turn’ in international theory is widely viewed as a cutting-edge development which pushes the field in fundamentally new directions. Challenging this narrative, this essay returns to the historical works of Walter Lippmann to show how thinking about emotions has been central to international theory for far longer than currently appreciated. Deeply troubled by his experience with propaganda during the First World War, Lippmann spent the next several decades thinking about the relationship between emotion, mass politics, and the challenges of foreign policy in the modern world. The result was a sophisticated account of the role of emotional stereotypes and symbols in mobilizing democratic publics to international action. I argue that a return to Lippmann's ideas offers two advantages. First, it shows his thinking on emotion and mass politics formed an important influence for key disciplinary figures like Angell, Morgenthau, Niebuhr, and Waltz. Second, it shows ...

International Theory, 2021

The recent 'emotion turn' in international theory is widely viewed as a cutting-edge development ... more The recent 'emotion turn' in international theory is widely viewed as a cutting-edge development which pushes the field in fundamentally new directions. Challenging this narrative, this essay returns to the historical works of Walter Lippmann to show how thinking about emotions has been central to international theory for far longer than currently appreciated. Deeply troubled by his experience with propaganda during the First World War, Lippmann spent the next several decades thinking about the relationship between emotion, mass politics, and the challenges of foreign policy in the modern world. The result was a sophisticated account of the role of emotional stereotypes and symbols in mobilizing democratic publics to international action. I argue that a return to Lippmann's ideas offers two advantages. First, it shows his thinking on emotion and mass politics formed an important influence for key disciplinary figures like Angell, Morgenthau, Niebuhr, and Waltz. Second, it shows why the relationship between emotion and democracy should be understood as a vital concern for international theory. Vacillating between scepticism and hope, Lippmann's view of democracy highlights a series of challenges in modern mass politicsdisinformation, the unintended consequences of emotional symbols, and responsibility for the public's emotional excesseswhich bear directly on democracies' ability to engage the world.

Special Issue: The Politicisation of Security: Controversy, Mobilisation, Arena Shifting

This article explores the role of emotion in the politicisation of security through the concept o... more This article explores the role of emotion in the politicisation of security through the concept of backlash: the idea of visceral and reactionary episodes where security claims are adamantly rejected and the subject of ‘security’ becomes intensely controversial. Starting by examining the role of emotion in politicisation, I make the case for viewing emotions as playing a key role in the distribution of certainty in security discourse. Building on this epistemic view of emotion, I review how backlash is understood in other fields before tailoring a definition for security studies centered around four constitutive features: reaction, hostility, emotion, and contagion. The final section focuses on the politicising effects of backlash including the mobilisation of backlash movements, the intensification of controversy, and arena shifting. The discussion concludes by suggesting that the concept of backlash offers a promising research agenda for those inquiring into the politicisation of ...

ERIS – European Review of International Studies