| Since the end of the cold war, politicians and scholars alike have advocated a reassessment of global security needs. One of the important responses to this challenge has been to call into question the definition of security itself. Redefinitions have varied from expansions of the traditional military-based notion of "national security" to entirely new orientations which focus on individual, world, and societal security. This work attempts to take the redefining process a step further by analyzing the benefits and shortcomings of the new definitions, and then introduce a more functional framework of "people's" security.;Owing to the observation that within the discipline of International Relations, people are often reduced to their identities as citizens, the proposed framework seeks to account people's multiple identities. This is done by categorizing people into identity groups or identity regions, the borders of which are flexible enough that they can be drawn differently for different purposes. Security, then comes to mean taking into account threats as they are perceived by different identity groups. However, a distinction between people's security and scientific security is made. The latter implies a diverse range of issues that are not likely to be directly felt by the lay person, such as specific military requisites and complex environmental threats. National security therefore in not meant to be dismissed, but supplemented by people's security.;To illustrate the applicability of the redefinition, the Arctic region is used as a broad case study. The region is approached as an integrated whole with an eye toward its indigenous peoples---particularly the Inuit and the Sami---whose primary identity groups cross state borders. Their perceived threats and insecurities bring into light the nature of environmental insecurity, economic insecurity, and cultural insecurity.;When a concept, which is at the core of a discipline is being redefined, the impact on the discipline as a whole cannot be dismissed. Therefore, any redefinition of security within the field of International Relations also draws attention to the paradigmatic level. |
