The spatial turn, reification and relational epistemologies in ‘knowing about’ security and peace
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836720954474 |
| Author | M Anne Brown |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836720954474
Cooperation and Conflict
2020, Vol. 55(4) 421 –441
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836720954474
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The spatial turn, reification and
relational epistemologies in
‘knowing about’ security
and peace
M Anne Brown
Abstract
How we approach knowing conflict and security makes a difference. This article first considers
how reification, instrumental subject/object relations and the drive for certainty and control
undermine effective knowledge and practice in questions of conflict and peace. It then turns to
what the spatial turn and notions of emplaced security might offer to working against violence.
As with any theoretical perspective, the spatial turn can itself be reified, repeating epistemological
relations entrenched in much security analysis. The spatial turn and emplaced security explicitly
highlight alternative, more relational knowledge practices, however. A relational epistemology
approaches knowledge not only as information about a subject out there, but also as a form
of practice with others which changes conditions of possibility for co-existence. If pursued,
such approaches could help loosen the grip of narrow constructions of security, insecurity, the
person, power and agency which dominate security analysis and obstruct understanding and the
generation of alternatives in situations of entrenched conflict. An orientation to place could
not only enable more nuanced accounts of peace and conflict, but support mutual recognition
and exchange across division, assisting an ethic of attention and concrete peace and conflict
resolution efforts.
Keywords
Emplaced security, knowledge practices, peace and conflict, reification, relational epistemology,
spatial turn
Introduction
Studies of security and insecurity have seen an upsurge of fresh perspectives over the
past few decades.1 This article considers one set of those perspectives – the focus on
space, place and notions of emplaced security – in terms of what it might bring to efforts
to understand and undo patterns of direct and structural violence. The discussion pursues
Corresponding author:
M Anne Brown, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
Email: anne.brown@pacsia.com
954474CAC0010.1177/0010836720954474Cooperation and ConflictBrown
research-article2020
Article
422 Cooperation and Conflict 55(4)
a particular, but fundamental, line of inquiry: consideration of knowledge practices, their
implication for questions of peace and conflict, and what the ‘turn’ to space, place and
emplacement might enable in this context. To consider fresh perspectives highlights the
question of what constitutes our habitual standpoints and established perspectives, not
only in terms of what we see, but in terms of the prior question of how we go about see-
ing, or how the processes by which we seek to know structure what we perceive.
How we know is particularly relevant to questions of peace and conflict. Knowledge
practices are saturated with relations of power, in the multiple senses of that term, as not
simply relations of control, but also the power to attract and resist, to shape values and
make meaning, to bring into focus or render invisible (Foucault, 2002). Moreover, con-
flict reshapes collective sources and dynamics of meaning, often over generations
(Volkan, 2018). It narrows and polarises positions, identities and perspectives, and strips
and ossifies our grasp of others’ and our own complex realities (Kalyvas, 2006;
Nordstrom, 2004). For many, including peoples across much of the post-colonial world,
being neither heard nor seen, or seen only in the categories of others, may be almost a
foundational reality (Brigg, 2020; Brown, 2002; De Leon, 2020; Nakata, 2007). The
processes by which we come to know thus relate in pervasive, subtle and at times sav-
agely direct ways to patterns of direct and structural violence and to our capacities for
openness towards others and towards different forms of socio-political order (Smith,
1999). Bringing such practices more clearly into view is critically important for ques-
tions of violent conflict and efforts to craft peace.
This article discusses problems of reification in peace and conflict studies and prac-
tice. It argues that, while there is no guarantee against reification, the spatial turn fore-
grounds certain commitments which, if taken seriously, offer an antidote to reification’s
more problematic forms. The first part of the discussion argues that a narrow set of
habitual knowledge practices prevails across security studies and associated fields, shap-
ing understanding, embedding power relations and conditioning and limiting what is
possible in efforts to undo patterns of direct and indirect violence. This point is consistent
with established critiques of the western-centric and gendered trajectory of security stud-
ies and international relations put forward by feminist and critical international relations,
critical development and Indigenous studies scholars (e.g. Enloe, 1996; Escobar, 1995;
Smith, 1999; Walker, 1993). Discussion here, however, focusses narrowly on knowledge
practices and their tendency to reification.
Reification is not a matter of whether theoretical positions are ‘new’ or ‘old’ per se.
New perspectives promise a shift of vantage point that enables different patterns of rela-
tions and ways of acting to become visible and perhaps to become possible. Newness can
be illusory, however. If new perspectives are deployed in ways that essentially reproduce
prevailing, problematic habits of knowing and patterns of reification, they are likely to
simply reproduce the old perspectives, albeit with some different terminology (as Morgan
Brigg’s article in this issue warns). It may not matter what theoretical departures we
embrace regarding peace and conflict, if our underlying knowledge practices embed
polarising, reified and instrumentalising modes of engagement that habitually marginal-
ise populations or ways of understanding and being alive.
Conflict itself generates reification, making the challenges of grappling with it foun-
dational for peace and conflict studies and practice. Resolving or transforming conflict
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