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‘human security’, the physical security risks for regressive defensive identities leading to
for women from violent men of whatever spatial as well as social segregation rather
nationality, race, and religion have been mar- than the democratic principle of pluralist
ginalized, if not completely ignored, within societies. These regressive, defensive identities
the overall global concern with security. can take the forms of racist, extreme Right
Except, I would add, when the call to protect movements on the one hand, and fundamen-
and/or liberate women was useful as a rally- talist religious movements, which have
ing cry for war – as, for example, happened appeared in all major religions during the last
in the case of the war in Afghanistan and to a twenty years, on the other hand.
lesser extent, on Iraq during the first decade Yet, we should not ignore the complex emo-
of this century. tions of impotence, fear, and yearning to belong
that drive the contemporary politics of belong-
ing. They are not pre-modern relics of the past –
they have been playing major constitutive
CONCLUDING REMARKS roles in local and global politics. The Right has
always understood and used them. It is time
Today – and probably always – belonging is the rest of us do as well – but differently.
multiplex and multi-layered, continuous and
shifting, dynamic and attached. This is true
both in terms of the subjective and in terms
of the political. The notion of belonging NOTES
should be examined not as an abstract notion
but as one that is embedded in specific dis- 1 Thanks to Richard Mowbray who drew my
courses of power, in which gender, class, attention to this literature.
sexual and racialized social and political 2 Use of this expression stresses the attempt –
even though it was ultimately unsuccessful – to find
divisions, local and global, are intermeshed.
spaces where international law would not apply.
It incorporates discourses of participation, of
identification, and of emotional attachments.
The task is to explore the extent to which it
is possible to develop a politics of belonging REFERENCES
in which differentiated social positionings,
identifications, and political values are
Abu-Saad, Ismael and Champagne, Duane
acknowledged in a non-exclusionary way
(2001) Guest Editorial for the Special Issue
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