Brown Bag Seminar Series by Samer Sharani (PhD candidate)

This research investigates how ontological security of individuals changes, whether it deteriorates or improves, during civil war. The literature indicates that civil war, as a traumatic event, greater or lesser, impacts individuals' ontological security according to their value systems, identities, and positions in the war, i.e., according to their psychological scripts. However, through the conduct and analysis of interviews with individuals from Salamieh City, Syria, this research found that ontological security is not reduced to a psychological status of an individual; rather, it is a multidimensional phenomenon that extends beyond the boundaries of the individual’s psychology to the world. Ontological security is better defined as a relational concept and phenomenon embedded in the interaction between the individual and her world and is not only registered “inside” the realm of the individual psyche. In addition, ontological security is multidimensional: While civil war may devastate ontological security in one dimension, it may nourish it in another. This complex conceptualization of ontological security demonstrates the genuine resistance of individuals during civil wars, which is not solely explained by their psychological capacity but also by the “nature” of ontological security itself.