Looking at Community Security Through Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Community security is one of seven categories of human security proposed in the UNDP's 1994 Human Development Report. Generally speaking, community security is the security people derive from their connection to a group. Unlike other categories of human security proposed in the 1994 Report, community security remains under-examined. It has so far attracted limited academic interest with International Relations literature emphasising a narrow focus on crime and conflict issues. The purpose of my thesis is to unpack the notion of community security. To do this, it's important to clarify what we mean by 'community'. Or put simply, to understand the security of a thing, we first need to understand what that thing is. Therefore, my thesis question is: How is community understood? My research begins by proposing a conceptual framework of how community is understood, drawn from the International Relations literature on community security. As noted above, this literature emphasises crime and conflict issues and from this I identify four concepts of community: Performative; Geographic; Replicative; and Delineative. I use this conceptual framework in my research as an interpretive tool, to provoke the discourse analysis of organisation documents and elite interviews. My research then focuses on two factors. First, I focus on the context of cultural heritage. Referring back to the 1994 Human Development Report, traditional languages, cultures, and the vulnerability of indigenous peoples are listed as examples of community insecurity (UNDP, 1994, p 31-32). Cultural heritage therefore provides a path for broadening community security beyond crime and conflict issues. Second, I focus on descriptions of community by government, non-government, and intergovernmental organisations in the context of cultural heritage. Questioning this perspective is important, because how these organisations recognise relevant communities will shape policies and programs at local, state and international levels. I examine three case studies in my thesis, selected to represent different aspects of cultural heritage: built objects as tangible cultural heritage in Syria; the Irish language in Ireland as an intangible cultural heritage; and indigenous fibre art in Australia as a mid-point case study that combines an intangible practice creating a tangible product. Together these case studies illuminate three key findings. First, that organisations use the language of emotions to describe communities. Second, that organisations also describe communities as having cooperative agency in the context of cultural heritage and human security. And finally, that in the context of cultural heritage, community security is the security of lived spaces and a sense of belonging. Show more