Dr Milla Vaha1
1The University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji
Biography:
Dr. Milla Vaha is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Affairs at The University of the South Pacific. Her research focuses on International Political Theory, exploring questions of ethics and world politics. She is the author of The Moral Standing of the State in International Politics: A Kantian Account (2021) as well as various journal articles and book chapters. She is currently working on a project looking at reparative justice in the Pacific in the context of nuclear and climate colonialism.
Abstract:
Ontological Security Theory (OST) has become an important subfield of security studies and exploration of identity, fear and anxiety in International Relations. It offers useful theoretical and conceptual tools in understanding relationships between the various state and non-state actors in world politics and has been applied to many pressing topics from human mobility and climate change to peace, memory and trauma. The focus of OST on non-physical dimensions of security and identity of actors, including the sense of belonging, have contributed to a richer understanding of agents and their actions as well as positionality in world politics. At the same time, the OST is a deeply Western research paradigm and therefore further theoretical work on how the OST could be utilised in studying the existential threats in post-colonial, non-Western settings such as the Pacific has so far been limited. This paper aims at contributing to that literature by building upon the existing work on the Pacific relationality, cosmology and space/place relationship. By engaging critically with the mainstream OST literature through the Pacific philosophy, the paper illustrates how a more systematic engagement with these holistic approaches to place, space, agency and security that supersede the dichotomous Self/Other foundations of OST can strengthen the theory as an analytical and conceptual approach to IR as well as facilitate a better study of existential insecurities in world politics.