Critical Security Studies Paul Roe

Critical Security Studies

Paul Roe

This course is concerned with how the so-called ‘critical turn’ in International Relations has been reflected specifically in thinking about Strategy and Security.

‘Critical Security Studies’ is, in its broadest sense, a collection of approaches all united by a profound dissatisfaction with so-called ‘traditional’ security studies. Critical Security Studies seeks to question, though not always completely do away with, the foundations upon which the dominant state-centrism and military-centrism is built.

This course deals with a number of these approaches: from the ‘conventional’ constructivists, through the ‘Copenhagen’ and ‘Aberystwyth’, or ‘Welsh’, Schools, to more ‘critical’ constructivist positions. In doing so, not only does it seek to illuminate the main theoretical assumptions underpinning each of the various approaches, but also to explore just how they are ‘critical’; that is, in what ways they challenge traditional security studies, and in what ways they compare and contrast with each other. While the course is mainly theoretical in its orientation, much emphasis is also placed on empirical application; how, and to what kind of cases, each of the approaches can be profitably applied.

This course is designed to produce the following main learning outcomes:

The ability to recognize various ways in which the ‘critical turn’ in IR has impacted Security studies;

The ability to reveal those assumptions that distinguish some critical positions from others;

The ability to both recognize and formulate questions that structure and contribute to existing debates;

The ability to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the application of (critical) theory to practice.

For this course, there are no lectures. Instead, students will participate in seminars where they are expected to form their own opinions through ‘critical’ evaluation of the readings. Seminar discussion will be structured around a short presentation of the topic, in which students will (briefly) summarise and then critique the readings. For each seminar, there will be one key text (in the course reader). For the topics discussed there is not necessarily a right answer. What is important is to focus on the way in which people think.

Each student will be assessed through a combination of seminar contribution and written work. In terms of written work, two research papers (approximately 4,000 words) are required; one mid-term and one end-term. The topics for the papers are of the students own choosing. For each of the two research papers 35% of the overall grade is allocated (total 70%). The remaining 30% is devoted to seminar attendance and contribution.

The research paper is the most important element as part of the overall assessment. In terms of grading the term paper, the categories below provide some guidance as to what qualities assessors are looking for, and what kinds of weakness may incline assessors towards giving a lower mark.

During this first week there will be no seminars. This then provides an opportunity for students to familiarize themselves with some of the forthcoming key texts and further readings

Jeffrey Legro, ‘Military Culture and Inadvertent Escalation in World War II’, International Security, vol.18, no.4, 1994.

Nina Tannenwald, ‘Stigmatizing the Bomb: Origins of the Nuclear Taboo’, International Security, vol.29, no.4, 2005.

Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The U.S. and the Non-Use of Weapons Since 1945 (Cambridge: CUP, 2007).

Peter Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), Chapter 4: Richard Price & Tannenwald, ‘Norms and Deterrence: The Nuclear and Chemical Weapons Taboos’; Chapter 6: Elizabeth Kier, ‘Culture and French Military Doctrine Before World War II’; Chapter 7: Alistair Iain Johnston, ‘Cultural Realism and Strategy in Maoist China’.

Theo Farrell & Helene Lambert, ‘Courting Controversy: International Law, National Norms and American Nuclear Use’, Review of International Studies, vol.27, no.3, 2001.

Farrell, ‘Transnational Norms and Military Development: Constructing Ireland’s Professional Army’, European Journal of International Relations, vol.7, no.1, 2001.

Farrell, ‘World Culture and Military Power’, Security Studies, vol.14, no.3, 2005.

Emily Goldman, ‘Cultural Foundations of Military Diffusion’, Review of International Studies, vol.32, no.1, 2006.

Edward Lock, ‘Refining Strategic Culture: Return of the Second Generation’, Review of International Studies, vol.36, no.3, 2010

Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995), Chapter 1: ‘Concepts and Definitions: “Third World” and “Security”’.

Brian L. Job (ed.), The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992), Chapter 1: Job, ‘The Insecurity Dilemma: National, Regime, and State Securities in the Third World’.

Further Reading:

Caroline Thomas, In Search of Security: The Third World in International Relations (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1987), Chapter 2: ‘Nation-Building and the Search for Security’.

Michael C. Williams & Krause (eds.), Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (London: UCL Press, 1997), Chapter 5: Ayoob, ‘Defining Security: A Subaltern Realist Perspective’; Chapter 10: Amitav Acharya, ‘The Periphery as the Core: The Third World and Security Studies’.

Keith Krause, ‘Theorizing Security, State Formation and the ‘Third World’ in the Post-Cold War World’, Review of International Studies, vol.24, no.1, 1998.

Peter Wilkin, ‘Global Poverty and Orthodox Security’, Third World Quarterly, vol.23, no.4, 2002.

Tarak Barkawi & Mark Laffey, ‘The Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies’, Review of International Studies, vol.32, no.2, 2006.

Ole Waever et al., Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe (London: Pinter, 1993), Chapter 2: Waever, ‘Societal Security: The Concept’.

Waever et al., Identity, Migration, Chapter 3: Buzan, ‘Societal Security, State Security and Internationalisation’.

Bill McSweeney, ‘Identity and Security: Buzan and the Copenhagen School’, Review of International Studies, vol.22, no.1, 1996.

Buzan & Waever, ‘Slippery? Contradictory? Sociologically Untenable? The Copenhagen School Replies’, Review of International Studies, vol.23, no.2, 1997.

Jef Huysmans, ‘Revisiting Copenhagen: Or, On the Creative Development of a Security Studies Agenda’, European journal of International Relations, vol.4, no.4, 1998.

Tobias Theiler, ‘Societal Security and Social Psychology’, Review of International Studies, vol.29, no.2, 2003.

Collins (ed.), Contemporary Security Studies, Chapter 10: Roe, ‘Societal Security’.
Week 4/Seminar 7. Security Communities

Key Text:

Laurie Nathan, ‘Domestic Instability and Security Communities, European Journal of International Relations, vol.12, no.2, 2006.

Emmanuel Adler & Michael Barnett (eds.), Security Communities (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), Chapter 2: Adler & Barnett, ‘A Framework for the Study of Security Communities’; Chapter 3: Waever, ‘Insecurity, Security and Asecurity in the West European Non-War Community’.

Adler, ‘The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice, Self-Restraint, and NATO’s Post Cold War Transformation’, European Journal of International Relations, vol.14, no.2, 2008.

Michael J. Williams & Iver Neuman, ‘From Alliance to Security Community: NATO, Russia, and the Power of Identity’, Millennium, vol.29, no.2, 1999.

Morten Boas, ‘Security Communities: Whose Security?’, Cooperation and Conflict, vol.35, no.3, 2000.

Farrell, ‘Constructivist Security Studies: Portrait of a Research Programme’, International Studies Review, vol.4, no.1, 2002.

Jennifer Mitzen, ‘Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma, European Journal of International Relations, vol.12, no.3, 2006.

Brent Steele, ‘‘Ideals That Were Never Really in Our Possession: Torture, Honor and US Identity’, International Relations, vol.22, no.2, 2008.

Steele, ‘Making Words Matter: The Asian Tsunami, Darfur, and “Reflexive Discourse” in International Politics’, International Studies Quarterly, vol.51, no.4 2007

Alexander Wendt, ‘The State as Person in International Theory’, Review of International Studies, vol.30, no.2, 2004.

Jacob Schiff, ‘‘Real’? As if! Critical Reflections on State Personhood’, Review of International Studies, vol.34, no.3, 2008.

Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State (London: Routledge, 2008), Chapter 2, ‘Identity, Morality, and Social Action’; Chapter 3, ‘The Possibilities as Self’.

Ayse Zarakol, ‘Ontological (In)security and State Denial of Historical Crimes: Turkey and Japan’, International Relations, vol.24, no.1, 2010.

Huysmans, ‘Security! What do you Mean? From Concept to Thick Signifier’, European Journal of International Relations, vol.4, no.2, 1998.

Bill McSweeney, Security, Identity, and Interests: A Sociology of International Relations (Cambridge: CUP, 1999).

Catarina Kinnvall, ‘Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the Search for Ontological Security’, Political Psychology, vol.25, no.4, 2004.

Steele, ‘Ontological Security and the Power of Self Identity: British Neutrality and the American Civil War’, Review of International Studies, vol.31, no.3, 2005.

Mitzen, ‘Anchoring Europe’s Civilizing Identity: Habits, Capabilities and Ontological Security’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol.13, no.2, 2006.
Week 5/Seminar 10. Security and Contestation: Identity and Symbolic Power

Key Text:

Ronald Krebs & Jennifer Lobasz, ‘Fixing the Meaning of 9/11: Hegemony, Coercion and the Road to War in Iraq, Security Studies, vol.16, no.3, 2007.

Krebs & Patrick Jackson, ‘Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric’, European Journal of International Relations, vol.13, no.1, 2007.

Janice Bially Mattern, ‘The Power Politics of Identity’, European Journal of International Relations, vol.7, no.3, 2001.

Jane Cramer, ‘Militarized Patriotisms: Why the U.S. Place of Ideas Failed Before the Iraq War’, Security Studies, vol.16, no.3, 2007.

A. Trevor Thrall, ‘A Bear in the Woods? Threat Framing and the Market Place of Ideas’, Security Studies, vol.16, no.3, 2007.

Jack Holland, ‘‘When You Think of the Taliban, Think of the Nazis’: Teaching Americans ‘9/11’ in NBC’s The West Wing’, Millennium, vol.40, no.1, 2011.

Richard Jackson, Writing the War on Terrorism (Manchester: MUP, 2005).

Michael Williams, Culture and Security: Symbolic Power and the Politics of International Security (London: Routledge, 2007).

Buzan, Waever, & Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998), Chapter 2: ‘Security Analysis: Conceptual Apparatus’.

Ronny D. Lipschutz (ed.), On Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), Chapter 3: Waever, ‘Securitization and Desecuritization’.

Jef Huysmans, ‘Revisiting Copenhagen: Or, On the Creative Development of a Security Studies Agenda’, European journal of International Relations, vol.4, no.4, 1998.

Olav F. Knudsen, ‘Post-Copenhagen Security Studies: Desecuritizing Securitization’, Security Dialogue, vol.32, no.3, 2001.

Collins (ed.), Contemporary Security Studies, Chapter 9: Ralf Emmers, ‘Securitization’.
Week 6/Seminar 12. Second Generation Securitization

Key Text:

Thierry Balzacq, ‘The Three Faces of Securitization: Political Agency, Audience and Context’, European Journal of International Relations, vol.11, no.2, 2005.

Balzacq, Securitization Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (London: Routledge, 2011).

Matt McDonald, ‘Securitization and the Construction of Security’, European Journal of International Relations, vol.14, no.4, 2008.

Holger Stritzel, ‘Towards a Theory of Securitization: Copenhagen and Beyond’, European Journal of International Relations, vol.13, no.3, 2007.

Stritzel, ‘Security, the Translation’, Security Dialogue, vol.42, no.4-5, 2011.

Paul Roe, ‘Actor, Audience(s) and Emergency Measures: Securitization and the UK’s Decision to Invade Iraq’, Security Dialogue, vol.39, no.6, 2008.

Didier Bigo, ‘Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease’, Alternatives, vol.27, Special Issue, 2002.

Ayse Ceyhan & Anastassia Tsoukala, ‘The Securitization of Migration in Western Societies: Ambivalent Discourses and Policies’, Alternatives, vol.27, Special Issue, 2002.

Jef Huysmans, ‘Defining Social Constructivism in Security Studies: The Normative Dilemma of Writing Security’, Alternatives, vol.27, Special Issue, 2002.

Kelstrup & Williams (ed.), International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration (London: Routledge, 2000), Chapter 8: Bigo, ‘When Two Become One: Internal and External Securitisations in Europe’.

Claire Wilkinson, ‘The Copenhagen School on Tour in Kyrgyzstan: Is Securitization Theory Useable Outside of Europe?’, Security Dialogue, vol.38, no.1, 2007.

Juha Vuori, ‘Illocutionary Logic and Strands of Securitization: Applying the Theory of Securitization to the Study of Non-Democratic Political Orders’, European Journal of International Relations, vol.14, no.1, 2008.

Monika Barthwal-Datta, ‘Securitising Threats Without the State: A Case Study of Misgovernance as a Security Threat in Bangladesh’, Review of International Studies, vol.35, no.2, 2009.

Nicole Jackson, ‘International Organizations, Security Dichotomies and the Trafficking of Persons and Narcotics in Post-Soviet Central Asia: A Critique of the Securitization Framework’, Security Dialogue, vol.37, no.3, 2006.

Pinar Bilgin, ‘Politics of Studying Securitization? Copenhagen School in Turkey’, Security Dialogue, vol.42, no.4-5, 2011.

Maria Julia Trombetta, ‘Environmental Security and Climate Change: Analysing the Discourse’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol.21, no.4, 2008.

Shirley Scott, ‘Securitizing Climate Change: International Legal Implications and Obstacles’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol.21, no.4, 2008.

Hakan Seckinelgin, Joseph Bigirumwami, & Jill Morris, ‘Securitization of HIV/AIDS in Context: Gendered Vulnerability in Burundi’, Security Dialogue, vol.41, no.5, 2010.

Felix Ciuta, ‘Security and the Problem: A Hermeneutical Critique of Securitisation Theory’, Review of International Studies, vol.35, no.2, 2009.
Week 8/Seminar 15. The Ethics of Securitization

Key Text:

Stefan Elbe, ‘Should HIV/AIDS Be Securitized? The Ethical Dilemmas of Linking HIV/AIDS and Security’, International Studies Quarterly, vol.50, no.1, 2006.

Floyd, ‘Towards a Consequentialist Evaluation of Security: Bringing Together the Copenhagen and Welsh Schools of Security Studies’, Review of International Studies, vol.37, no.2, 2007.

Floyd, Security and the Environment: Securitisation Theory and US Environmental Security Policy (Cambridge: CUP, 2010).

Floyd, ‘Can Securitization Theory be Used in Normative Analysis: Towards a ‘Just Securitization Theory’, Security Dialogue, vol.42, no.4-5, 2011.

Huysmans, ‘Minding Exceptions: The Politics of Insecurity and Liberal Democracy’, Contemporary Political Theory, vol.3, no.3, 2004.
Week 8/Seminar 16. Reflexive Security Studies: Risk

Key Text:

Michael Williams, ‘(In)Security Studies, Reflexive Modernisation and the Risk Society’, Cooperation and Conflict, vol.43, no.1, 2008.

Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, ‘‘It Sounds Like a Riddle’: Security Studies, the War on Terror and Risk’, Millennium, vol.33, no.2, 2004.

Rasmussen ‘Reflexive Security: NATO and International Risk Society’, Millennium, vol.30, no.2, 2001.

Rasmussen, ‘‘A Parallel Globalization of Terror’: 9-11, Security and Globalization’, Cooperation and Conflict, vol.37, no.3, 2002

Karen Lund Petersen, ‘Risk Analysis: A Field Within Security Studies?’, European Journal of International Relations, vol.18, no.4, 2011.

Olaf Corry, ‘Securitization and ‘Riskification’: Second Order Security and the Politics of Climate Change’, Millennium, vol.40, no.2, 2012.
Weeks 9/Seminar 17, Week 9/Seminar 18, & Week 10/Seminar 19. The Politics of Fear

For these three seminar sessions, a three-part film will be shown; Adam Curtis’ The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear. The film explores the parallel development of two political movements: in the U.S., the Neo-Conservatives, and in North Africa the Islamic Brotherhood/Islamic Jihad. The film shows how not only certain constructions of threat are made possible, but the political function of these constructions; that is, the ordering of societies along particular lines. The aim of these seminars is to reveal not so much what security is, but, perhaps more pertinently, what security does.

Lene Hansen, ‘The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School’, Millennium, vol.29, no.2, 2000.

Hansen, ‘Theorizing the Image for Security Studies: Visual Securitization and the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis’, European Journal of International Relations, vol.17, no.1, 2011.

Huysmans, ‘What is in an Act? On Security Speech Acts and Little Security Nothings’, Security Dialogue, vol.42, no.4-4, 2011.

Vibeke Schou Tjalve, ‘Designing (de)Security: European Exceptionalism, Atlantic Republicanism and the ‘Public Sphere’, Security Dialogue, vol.42, no.4-5, 2011.

Campbell, ‘Cultural Governance and Pictorial Resistance: Reflections on the Imaging of War, Review of International Studies, vol.29, no.2, 2003.

Stuart Croft, ‘Images and Imaginings of Security’; James Gow, ‘Strategic Pedagogy and Pedagogic Strategy’; Andrew Hoskins, ‘Temporality, Proximity, and Security: Terror in a Media-Drenched Age’; Brandon Hamber, Paddy Hillyard, Amy Maguire, Monika McWilliams, Gillian Robinson, David Russell, & Margaret Ward, ‘Discourses in Transition: Re-imagining Women’s Insecurity’, International Relations, vol.20, no.4, 2006.

Williams, ‘Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics’, International Studies Quarterly, vol.47, no.4, 2003.
Week 11/Seminar 21. The ‘Welsh School’: Security as Emancipation

Key Text:

Ken Booth, ‘Security and Emancipation’, Review of International Studies, vol.17, no.4, 1991.

Mike Bourne & Dan Bulley, ‘Securing the Human in Critical Security Studies: The Insecurity of a Secure Ethics’, European Security, vol.20, no.3, 2011.

Booth, Theory of World Security (Cambridge: CUP, 2007).

Booth, ‘Human Wrongs and International Relations’, International Affairs, vol.71, no.1, 1995.

Williams & Krause (eds.), Critical Security Studies, Chapter 4: Booth, ‘Security and Self: Reflections of a Fallen Realist; Chapter 11: Booth & Peter Vale, ‘Critical Security Studies and Regional Insecurity: The Case of Southern Africa’.

Richard Wyn Jones, Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999), Chapter 6: ‘Emancipation: Reconceptualizing Practice’.

Booth (ed.) Critical Security Studies and World Politics (London: Lynne Rienner, 2005), Chapter 9: Wyn Jones, ‘On Emancipation: Necessity, Capacity, and Concrete Utopias’; Chapter 11: Booth, ‘Beyond Critical Security Studies’.

Mark Neufeld, ‘Pitfalls of Emancipation and Discourses of Security: Reflections on Canada’s ‘Security With a Human Face’’, International Relations, vol.18, no.1, 2004.

Booth, ‘Anchored in Tahrir Square’, European Security, vol.20, no.3, 2011.

Christopher Browning & Matt McDonald, ‘The Future of Critical Security Studies: Ethics and the Politics of Security’, European Journal of International Relations, vol.?, no.?, 2012.

Benjamin Shepherd, ‘Thinking Critically about Food Security’, Security Dialogue, vol.43, no.3, 2012.