The Fragility of Fear: the Contentious Politics of Emotion and Security in Canada by Eric Van Rythoven A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Political Science Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2017, Eric Van Rythoven Abstract International Relations (IR) theory commonly holds security arguments as powerful instruments of political mobilization because they work to instill, circulate, and intensify popular fears over a threat to a community. Missing from this view is how security arguments often provoke a much wider range of emotional reactions, many of which frustrate and constrain state officials’ attempts to frame issues as security problems. This dissertation offers a corrective by outlining a theory of the contentious politics of emotion and security. Drawing inspiration from a variety of different social theorists of emotion, including Goffman’s interactionist sociology, this approach treats emotions as emerging from distinctive repertoires of social interaction. These emotions play a key role in enabling audiences to sort through the sound and noise of security discourse by indexing the significance of different events to our bodies. Yet popular emotions are rarely harmonious; they’re socialized and circulated through a myriad of different pathways. Different repertoires of interaction in popular culture, public rituals, and memorialization leave audiences with different ways of feeling about putative threats. The result is mixed and contentious emotions which shape both opportunities and constraints for new security policies. The empirical purchase of this theory is illustrated with two cases drawn from the Canadian context: indigenous protest and the F-35 procurement. Both represent cases where attempts by state officials to frame an issue as a security problem were frustrated and constrained by a contentious politics of emotion. In the conclusion, I argue these findings should push IR theorists to adopt a more circumspect view of the mobilization of i fear, and a greater awareness of how emotions can play a key role in constituting the limits of the politics of security. ii Acknowledgements This was an emotional and contentious project. As much as I enjoyed writing it, there were periods wracked by serious doubt and uncertainty. Pulling me through these periods was an extensive community of friends, family, and colleagues. Carleton’s Department of Political Science has been my home for the entirety of this project. It includes an exceptional group of faculty, students, and administrators—all of which work hard to make the Department a rich and creative home. I would like to thank the administrative staff, especially Brookes Fee, for consistently helping me navigate the University bureaucracy. I’d also like to thank the Department’s faculty— especially Mira Sucharov, Brian Schmidt, Elinor Sloan, Hans Martin Jaeger, and Fiona Robinson—for ensuring I was exposed to an intellectually rich and diverse set of views for thinking about international politics. Many of the ideas in this dissertation emerged from a series of meetings and panels at ISA and ISA Northeast, as well as numerous interactions with journal editors and reviewers. There is not enough space to capture how each of these people helped to improve my work, so I will simply thank Daniel Levine, Annette Freyberg-Inan, Jennifer Mitzen, David Michael McCourt, Andrew Ross, Felix Berenskoetter, and Daniel Monk for their thoughtful feedback and support. This research would not have been possible without the support of a series of grants and scholarships, including a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship, and multiple Ontario Graduate Scholarships. I’m grateful to both Canadians and Canadian governments for their support. iii Although I envisioned doing more interviews for Chapter 5, the individuals who I did meet with were immensely knowledgeable and kind. They helped me understand how shallow my understanding of indigenous politics in Canada was, and I am grateful for their patience, time, and effort. Over the years I had the privilege of learning alongside some exceptional scholars and colleagues. I’d like to thank Jack Adam MacLennan, Ajay Parasram, and Julia Calvert. They are all bright and hardworking scholars, and models of what early- career scholars should be. More recently, Ty Solomon and Andrew Ross have profoundly shaped my thinking on emotions and IR, and I’d add to this Jarrod Hayes, whom has played a major influence in how I think about securitization theory. Special thanks goes to my committee. Brian Schmidt and Elinor Sloan have been supportive of this project—even when I have not articulated its purpose or nuances as clearly as I should have. I’d especially like to thank my supervisor Mira Sucharov who has diligently and thoughtfully read almost everything I produced in graduate school. She has been an incredible mentor, and my most trusted adviser. My friends and family have made Ottawa a welcome home. I am thankful to Patrick, Didier, Nadia, the Lauras, James, Fabien, Greg, Jocelyn, Matt, Dave, Kailey, and the many others who have enriched my time here. I could not have succeeded without the constant support of my family, including my brother Adrian and my grandparents, Heather, John, Cornelius, and Yvonne. I could not have achieved this without the unwavering support of Laura, my brilliant and caring wife. This dissertation is dedicated to our soon-to-be-born daughter in the hopes that it points to a more optimistic future than others have imagined. iv Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................. i Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................... iii Contents ........................................................................................................................................... v List of Figures and Tables .............................................................................................................. viii List of Appendices ........................................................................................................................... ix 1.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Moving Beyond Monochrome ............................................................................................... 3 1.2 From Grease to Glue .............................................................................................................. 5 1.3 Plan of the Dissertation ......................................................................................................... 8 1.4 Why This Matters ................................................................................................................. 13 2.0 The Fear-as-Mobilization Thesis in International Relations Theory ........................................ 16 2.1 Tracing the Fear-as-Mobilization Thesis .............................................................................. 22 2.1.1 Theories of Realism ....................................................................................................... 24 2.1.2 Threat Inflation and the Market Place of Ideas ............................................................ 34 2.1.3 International Political Sociology.................................................................................... 41 2.1.4 Theories of Securitization ............................................................................................ 46 2.1.5 On the Origins of the Fear-as-Mobilization Thesis ....................................................... 50 2.2 The Dystopian Idealism in International Relations Theory .................................................. 56 2.2.1 Fear and the Limits of Power ........................................................................................ 57 2.2.2 Fear and the Empirics of Fragility ................................................................................. 61 2.2.3 Fear: Substance Versus Relation ................................................................................... 65 2.3 Conclusion: Towards a Contentious Politics of Emotion ..................................................... 68 3.0 Theorizing a Contentious Politics of Emotion and Security ..................................................... 70 3.1 The Blooming, Buzzing Confusion of the Social World ........................................................ 74 3.1.1 The Constructivist Problem of Uncertainty .................................................................. 74 3.1.2 Hierarchies, Socialization, and Anchoring ..................................................................... 80 v 3.1.3 Emotions and the Uncertainty Problem ....................................................................... 85 3.2 Emotions as Embodied Judgements .................................................................................... 89 3.2.1 Where NeoJamesian and Appraisal Theories of Emotion Meet ................................... 90 3.2.2 Embodied Judgements as Processes............................................................................. 96 3.2.3 Embodied Judgements as Dispositions ........................................................................