State-society complexes in ontological security-seeking in IR

This article provides a framework for theorising ontological security-seeking in IR in an analytically complex yet non-reductionist manner. Drawing on an historical-sociological perspective, it relocates the referent object of ontological security from the state to the state-society complex, thus enabling us to elucidate the links between individual, society and the state in ontological security-seeking, and to explicate the synergism between internal and external referentiality in the constitution of self-identity. I argue that ontological security is the result of mutual reflexivity in state-society relations. Where such reflexivity is low, ontological security-seeking lapses into the securitisation of identity. This theoretical framework is illustrated in the context of Russia's ontological security-seeking.