Justin Joseph

Securitisation framework of the Copenhagen School in International Relations Theory has widely been applied to study policy processes aimed at environmental security, however, in the developed liberal democracies of the Global North. Non-Western polities such as India and China also attempt to securitise their environmental sector due to emerging non-traditional security challenges like pollution and natural calamities. One of the significant differences between countries of the Global North and Global South in this context is that the latter witnesses a policy dichotomy due to their economic interests and ecological conditions as development is understood as the anti-thesis of environmental conservation. This chapter sets the ground for exploring the patterns of differences and similarities in the process of environmental securitisation in India and China for gathering more evidences from the Global South for theory building in International Relations in general and the role of audience in securitisation framework in particular.

The Global North-led initiatives to achieve “pan-securitisation” of environmental issues have often been met with vehement resistance from the Global South. This paper explores the foundations, motivations, and other nuances of this resistance, with a particular focus on India and China. It uses discourse analysis to examine how they use the international fora to counter the West’s narrative of the intrinsic link between environment and international security. Building on this, it explores the securitisation process beyond its one-way, linear template. Finally, the paper uses the inferences from the cases to test the relevance and utility of the Copenhagen School itself by assessing the recent scholarship that has been critical of the school for its civilisationism and methodological biases. In sum, the paper urges a rethinking of an uncritical application of the Copenhagen School’s securitisation framework to understand nuances of securitising moves at the international level that involve complex power dynamics.

This book examines how emerging environmental challenges are situated within existing International Relations (IR) theoretical understandings of 'security'. As governments in the Global South undertake policy interventions to mitigate the impact of increasing climatic changes and yearn to achieve human-nature harmony, one can observe similar patterns of responses chiefly due to the ecology-economy dichotomy in these states and their societies. In this context, it brings to the readers various aspects of the theory and practice of state interventions in the form of environmental securitization in the Global South majorly under four themes (encompassing theory and policy processes). Chapters in this volume explicate connections between the environment and International Relations Theory, securitization in developing countries, state society and the environment in India and China and lastly, public participation and environmental policymaking. It presents a comprehensive and coherent overview of the politics of securitization in India and China, two prominent economies in the Global South. Faculty and researchers who work on non-western International Relations theory and non-traditional security threats, policy practitioners and experts in environmental policymaking, and students of IR and Comparative Politics, chiefly, will benefit from this book. Dr Joe Thomas Karackattu is Associate Professor with the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. He was "CISLI Fellow" (2017-19) at the New School, New York and "Fox Fellow" (2008-09) at Yale University. Dr Justin Joseph currently works as Assistant Professor at the School of Social Sciences and Languages (SSL), Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) University, Chennai Campus, India. Dr Ramnath Reghunadhan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Sciences in School of Social Sciences and Languages (SSL), Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) University, Vellore Campus, India.

The paper presents Henry More’s doctrine of the Spirit of Nature. Through a thorough analysis of both his earlier and later work, it shows in which regards he draws from traditional Neo-Platonic notions of a soul of the world and in which regards he transforms it in order to fi t it into the framework of early modern natural philosophy. The guideline is an attempt to map possible parallels between the functions of imagination on a microcosmic scale and the Spirit of Nature on a macrocosmic one. Although this parallel cannot be pushed through to its ultimate consequences within More’s system, it nevertheless proves to be fruitful. Both the Spirit of Nature and the imagination are for More something ambivalent, both noble and gross, on the edge between body and soul. As such, however, they are remnants of More’s early gradualism that are in confl ict with the psycho-physical dualism he endorsed in his later work.