Dugong v. Rumsfeld : social movements and the construction of ecological security

Abstract

Two high-profile social movements against the construction of military bases in Jeju, South Korea, and Okinawa, Japan, represent a contest between anti-militarist ecological security and traditional military security. At the heart of these movements, which went from a local phenomenon to a transnational cause célèbre, are two iconic movement symbols: Gureombi, a unique lava rock formation, and the dugong, an endangered marine mammal. By analyzing the emergence and resonance of the two nonhuman movement symbols, the paper joins the continuing debates in International Relations (IR) over what constitutes security and who deserves protection. The contributions are twofold. First, it employs theories of social and transnational movements to establish movement actors as practitioners of ecological security, showing how recent theoretical debates in IR on ecological security parallel new developments in social movements against military bases. Second, by analyzing the emergence and resonance of nonhuman beings as anti-militarist ecological symbols, the paper also contributes to the growing literature on ecological security that currently lacks empirical examinations.