April 23, 2007
Inspired by comments
Colin and Limor have made over on the VSS blog I wanted to propose for explicit discussion (again) the question: what is a problematization? Rather than re-state the basic question that everyone is asking, let me just quote a part of Colin's question (Limor's is along very similar lines):
"My question concerns this claim, which I’m not sure does adequate service to the genealogy traced in the rest of the paper: “technological and political developments rendered prior security frameworks inadequate, and forced experts to invent new ways of identifying and intervening in security threats†(p.2).
The claim seems to be that ’something happened’ and this ’something’ simply forced people to develop expertise around new topics. But what is the ’something’ and where did it come from? Did these tech/pol developments force experts to respond to ‘vital security’ matters? Or did the experts seal their status as experts by, at least in part. formulating vital security as a problem? This doesn’t mean that the problem is
simply constructed but neither is it
simply real. For what I can gather you want to articulate a view somewhere between constructed and real or rather a view that encompasses both of these.
The experts help shape the problems which then in turn further propel the experts. Problems and their solutions are reciprocal, such that you simply cannot have one without the other. Fields or problematization are thus
practices which are, we might say, real constructions or constructed realities. Is that fair? Is there a better way to put it given your aims here?"