More-than-human approaches to maritime security: The case of the Baltic Sea

The interactions between security, society, and everyday life are a central concern for international political sociology. More-than-human approaches to security expand the understanding of society to include non-human elements, such as species and ecosystems, technologies, and infrastructure, to discuss their role in security thinking. My case focuses on the nexus of security- society-water relations in the context of the Baltic Sea. Firstly, I discuss current epistemic practices to define water-society relations in security thinking. The problem is that the current approaches to securitize the Baltic Sea, including various water and sea-related approaches, do not capture the multiple, entangled nature of everyday water-society relations. Secondly, I will develop an alternative approach to maritime security based on current more-than-human debates in IR to reassemble the security concept to include non-human elements, to translate water-society relations as a problem for IR security studies beyond the contemporary hydro-hegemonic approach, and to represent water-society relations in the Baltic Sea as an everyday security concern.