Human security and women’s security reality in Northwest Russia - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 235

be considered potential human security issues, and it is their indexing in
terms of whether they cumulate to a certain threshold that decides whether
they are acknowledged as human security issues. '[O]nly the most serious
[threats], those that take or seriously threatens lives, are included' (Owen
2004b:383). For the purpose of establishing the truth about human security,
rules such as a specific threshold to be observed empirically are suggested and
employed. These delimitations of the human security concept are analytically
motivated and explained. Threshold-based definitions thus allow twenty-five
deaths to be relevant for consideration as a human security issue, but as noted
by Grayson (2004), these suggestions of a 'precise/scientific/workable' defini-
tion of human security exclude twenty-four civilian deaths. The exclusion of
these deaths determines the understanding and knowledge production of the
comprehensive human security reality when such criteria defined from above
and operationalized in indexes dominate empirical human security research: a
policy maker, or an academic, decides what is worthy of attention for human
security. Security is then examined from the top down. Such a focus on index-
ing as exemplified with the Human Security Report and the work of Booysen
and Owen, among others, reveals an objectivist bias that is not uncommon in
security research (Pouliot 2007:377).
Annick Wibben's (2008) call for an 'opening' of the security debate
addresses an analytical sensitivity to people, places and issues in regard to
definitions of security. Understood as an alternative epistemological out-
look (Hoogensen and Stuvøy 2006; Burgess et al . 2007:12), human security,
through its focus on non-state actors like individuals, by its nature implies
openness to meanings of security. Phillip Darby (2006:467) argued that
'groundedness in lived experience is a vital corrective to the faceless, place-
less narratives so characteristic of security texts'. This requires reduced
control over the interpretation of security but also acts as a basic position-
ing for beginning to examine the comprehensive human security reality.
The aim of examining local practices of security, and thereby contributing
to the comprehension of people's human security reality and a bottom-up
perspective, inspired my work on women's security in regard to violence
against women in Northwest Russia. Empirical groundedness and a focus
on local viewpoints do, as noted above, imply openness to the interpretation
and understanding of what security is and, in the following, I will explain
the fragile security production characteristic of the context of Northwest
Russia and women's security.
Non-state crisis centres as a local security actor
Although violence against women is recognized to be a global problem, media
and political focus on specific countries and regions, like Afghanistan, ensures
there are certain parts of the world that get less attention, but which can pos-
sibly provide new insights into the issue. As the chapters in Part I of this