Desecuritization, a concept under construction. The return of the treatment of nuclear energy to ordinary political channels in japan in light of the Fukushima accident
Keywords:
Securitization, Politization, Negative desecuritization, Nuclear energy, FukushimaCopyright (c) 2018 Maria Francisca CASADO CLARO
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Although desecuritization has been defined as a conceptual twin born at the same time as securitization, it has not received an equivalent treatment in academic debate. Unlike the latter, it has had little theoretical or empirical development, going mostly unnoticed despite being essential to understand the desecuritizing mechanisms that lead to the politicization of issues that had previously been dealt with in a security mode. Even more so if we take into account that for the Copenhagen School, in a way securitization was a failure of ordinary politics, which is where issues that affect citizens should be discussed.
In order to contribute to its development, the article reviews the literature and explores different ways of desecuritizing security issues (objectivist, constructivist and deconstructivist strategies, and desecuritization by stabilization, by replacement, by rearticulation or by silencing). In order to make an empirical contribution to the application and diffusion of the concept, the case of the return to ordinary policy of the treatment of nuclear energy in Japan in light of the Fukushima accident is analyzed and, likewise, the concept of "negative desecuritization" is presented as an original contribution to the debate.
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