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Palgrave Macmillan

NATO, Civilisation and Individuals

The Unconscious Dimension of International Security

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Sarah da Mota

    1. Lausanne, Switzerland

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  • Critically engages with the sensitive and charged association of “NATO” with “civilisation”
  • Breaks ground developing the complementary association of those two terms with “individuals”
  • Offers a 'psychoanalysis' of NATO through a unique exploration of the “unconscious” dimension and the psychological substance of individuals

Part of the book series: New Security Challenges (NSECH)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
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  2. Seeking Alternative Connections Between Civilisation and Security

    • Sarah da Mota
    Pages 1-31

  3. IR’s Disciplinary Connections with Western Civilisation

    • Sarah da Mota
    Pages 33-44

  4. Individualising Civilisation: The Civilised Subject of Security

    • Sarah da Mota
    Pages 45-68

  5. Standards of Civilisation: Architecting Security, Order, and Hierarchy

    • Sarah da Mota
    Pages 69-80

  6. NATO’s Deep Origins (1939–1949): Unbreaking the Civilised Habitus?

    • Sarah da Mota
    Pages 81-117

  7. NATO’s Cold War Evolution: Civilisation from Referent Object to Standard

    • Sarah da Mota
    Pages 119-142

  8. Post-Cold War NATO: New Ways and Reasons for Coexistence

    • Sarah da Mota
    Pages 143-161

  9. The Individualisation of Security: A New Architecture for International Security

    • Sarah da Mota
    Pages 163-184

  10. The Individualisation of Security Within NATO

    • Sarah da Mota
    Pages 185-229

  11. Conclusion

    • Sarah da Mota
    Pages 231-238

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 239-241
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Keywords

About this book

This book critically engages with NATO’s two main referent objects of security: civilisation and individuals. By rethinking the seemingly natural assumption of these two referent objects, it suggests the epistemological importance of an unconscious dimension to understand meaning formation and behaviour change in international security. 


The book provides a historicised and genealogical approach of the idea of civilisation that is at the core of the Alliance, in which human needs, narratives, and security arrangements are interconnected. It suggests that there is a Civilised Subject of Security at the core of modern Western security that has constantly produced civilised and secure subjects around the world, which explains NATO’s emergence around a civilisational referent. The book then proceeds by considering the Individualisation of Security after the Cold War as another stage of the civilising process, based on NATO’s military operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Reviews

“This book represents one of the few works to examine the fundamental purposes and goals of NATO from a critical theoretical perspective. By examining the unconscious connections between civilisation and security, it shows how NATO has sought to forge the development of an Atlantic Community whose roots are deeper even than the necessity for common defence. And in the process of constructing and imposing its own conceptions of a civilisational identity, NATO has made it even more difficult to effectively manage its defence and security inter-actions with non-NATO states and societies that do not necessarily fit into its preconceived civilisational values and norms.” (Hall Gardner, author of Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History and NATO Expansion and US Strategy in Asia)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Lausanne, Switzerland

    Sarah da Mota

About the author

Sarah da Mota is currently researching astropolitics and the impact of space exploration for IR, peace and security. She has co-authored Drones and the uninsurable security subjects (Third World Quarterly) and Visibility and Politics: an Arendtian reading of US drone policy (Nação e Defesa). 

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