Keywords = Insecurity
Number of Articles: 3
Understanding the Relationship between Social and Security Issues from the Perspectives of Modern and Postmodern Paradigms: A Focus on the Ideas of Émile Durkheim and Jacques Derrida

Understanding the Relationship between Social and Security Issues from the Perspectives of Modern and Postmodern Paradigms: A Focus on the Ideas of Émile Durkheim and Jacques Derrida

Volume 28, Issue 1, Summer 2025, Pages 115-139

https://doi.org/10.22034/ssq.2025.500724.4248

Nurullah nourani, Ali Alaei

Abstract Introduction
Understanding and addressing social and security issues today requires a deep and fundamental theoretical analysis based on dominant paradigms. This paper focuses on the ideas of Émile Durkheim and Jacques Derrida to compare how social and security issues are viewed from modern and postmodern paradigms. The main goal is to explore how social problems turn into security crises and to examine how these issues are understood, explained, and addressed within the frameworks of these two distinguished thinkers. This study also aims to offer a combined model that can be useful for current security policymaking.
Methodology
The study employs a qualitative method with a comparative and discourse analysis approach. Key concepts such as order, threat, cohesion, exclusion, and insecurity are explored through the works of Durkheim and Derrida. The analysis is structured around three steps—identifying, explaining, and addressing —to better understand the connection between social and security issues in both modern and postmodern paradigms. The main data comes from classic texts in sociology and political philosophy, analyzed conceptually.
Discussion and Results
According to Durkheim, social problems become security crises when social institutions fail to perform their roles and social cohesion weakens. Therefore, security depends on institutional order and social solidarity. His solutions focus on gradually reforming economic structures and strengthening intermediate institutions. On the other hand, Derrida sees security as a fluid, language-based, and discursive construct that is constantly reshaped through interaction with the Other and opposing categories like safe/risky. He warns that excessive securitization can lead to excluding others, structural violence, and creating more insecurity. Derrida’s method of deconstruction helps reveal contradictions within dominant discourses and exposes how exclusion and power operate in security processes. In short, Durkheim emphasizes objectivity and institution, while Derrida rethinks security in terms of meaning, difference, and accepting the Other.
Conclusion
The findings suggest that combining Durkheim’s and Derrida’s perspectives provides a comprehensive framework for analyzing security and shaping policies. Durkheim focuses on the function of social institutions and economic reform, while Derrida highlights the need to rethink closed security discourses and be open to differences and otherness. Together, their views offer policymakers a flexible, justice-oriented strategy for dealing with social and security challenges. Finally, the study stresses the importance of avoiding unnecessary securitization, accepting ontological insecurity, and building resilient social institutions to ensure sustainable security.

The roots of insecurity in modern political philosophy; Critical Reconstruction of Thomas Hobbes Philosophical Anthropology

The roots of insecurity in modern political philosophy; Critical Reconstruction of Thomas Hobbes' Philosophical Anthropology

Volume 25, Issue 1, Spring 2022, Pages 227-248

Seyed reza shakeri

Abstract By asking about security in Hobbes's political philosophy, this article addresses why power and security are intertwined in the modern state and the virtuous role of human beings in providing and promoting security in society has been neglected. In other words, insecurity in the contemporary era, and especially in the wake of the formation of global experiences of Leviathan as the only legitimate and effective power structure in societies and international relations, rather than resulting from power struggles between states are rooted in Hobbes's anthropology, which is itself the theoretical foundation of the modern state. Using this theory of critical reconstruction based on Hobbes's internal logic of anthropology, this study tries to introduce insecure and insecure sources in Hobbes's view of human beings and Identity. The results of this study show that Hobbes's anthropology, as the theoretical basis of the structure of today's modern state, makes man an inherently dangerous, anxious, selfish, and at the same time legitimate and justified being in achieving all his desires. This type of anthropology is the main source of insecurity production, the consequences and effects of which are reflected in Leviathan.

Property Right Security and Underdevelopment in Iran

Property Right Security and Underdevelopment in Iran

Volume 20, Issue 76, Summer 2017, Pages 33-64

Fatemeh Sorkhedehi, Hussein Raghfar, Farshad Momeni

Abstract The paper intends to discuss about the property right security in Iran during 1925 – 2011 and its implications in terms of Iran’s underdevelopment. Therefore, different variables are considered and discussed such as, rule of law, fight against corruption, the courts’ impartiality and independency, investment prospect and finally access to financial resources and loans. In this way, the assumption of the author is that undesired circumstances of the said elements in the above period have led to aggressions against property right, specially the property right of the production sector. This insecurity has caused growth of unproductive sector and increase in renrier sector; it has prevented any initiatives and entrepreneurship the result of which is underdevelopment of Iran.