Virtuous imperialism or a shared global objective? - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 69

that oil and gas activity would bring to their region, many expressed a fear
about not having their concerns heard about the impacts of such activity on
their communities and livelihoods (ibid.). Poor, unrepresentative legislation,
a lack of participation and consultation, a fear for the impact on the environ-
ment upon which many Nenets rely for other economic activities (reindeer
herding) and a fear for their very identity and existence as Nenets or Komi
communities were all raised as primary concerns (ibid.). These concerns, not
least the perceived impacts from local actors regarding negative changes that
could have detrimental effects upon the existence of their communities as
indigenous groups, as well as the knowledge and capacities of indigenous
peoples to mitigate, reduce or eliminate these fears, could be better included.
Power devolving to people who have a better, or at least more complex, on-
the-ground knowledge about security issues for their own communities, but
also for communities and regions beyond local spaces, where knowledge can
be shared more widely with others, is crucial to understanding human secu-
rity (in both the global South and North). Human security policies cannot
be determined from above, from elites or state actors who cannot identify
human security concerns alone. As argued in Oran Young's chapter in this
book, room must be made for integrating knowledge from and between dif-
ferent systems, ecological and social. Knowledge about the interconnections
of these systems is further demonstrated to be insufficient amongst domi-
nant knowledge institutions (see Young, this topic). Thus seeking out bodies
of knowledge that have longer traditions of such integration is relevant to
today's policy making regarding a broader operationalization of security.
Feminist approaches to human security
The traditional goal, and perceived outcome, of the narrative selection
process has been the achievement of order, unity, and coherence in sup-
port of a particular modern social, symbolic, political order. To achieve
this goal, some narratives are relegated to the margins, and others silenced
… every instance of selection is also a political moment.
(Wibben 2011:64)
Feminist approaches draw the focus to the voices of women, whose perspectives
have also not been traditionally included in the security debate, but which
have the ability to transcend and integrate many of the levels and sectors of
security that scholars have otherwise chosen to analyse separately: 'security nar-
ratives limit how we can think about security, whose security matters, and
how it might be achieved' (ibid.:65). Instead of playing into the dominant
approaches to security studies that focus on a very small portion of the security
grid and from the top down, gender analysis takes its starting point from the
bottom up; it reaches all the way down to the individual, as gender analysis
acknowledges that even the personal is political, and therefore the individual's