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During the Cold War the concept of international security was understood in military terms as the threat or use of force by states. The end of EastÐWest hostilities, however, brought 'critical' perspectives to the fore as scholars sought to explain the emergence of new challenges to international stability, such as environmental degradation, immigration and terrorism. The second edition of this popular and highly respected text offers a wide-ranging and comprehensive analysis of the growing field of critical security studies. All the chapters have been fully revised and updated to map the on-going evolution of debates about international security since 1989, including the more recent shift in emphasis from critiques of the realist practices of states to those of global liberal governance. Topics covered include the relationship between security and change, identity, the production of danger, fear and trauma, human insecurity and emancipation. The book explores the meaning and use of these concepts and their relevance to real-life situations ranging from the War on Terror to the Arab Spring, migration, suffering in war, failed states and state-building, and the changing landscape of the international system, with the emergence of a multipolar world and the escalation of global climate change. Written with verve and clarity and incorporating new seminar activities and questions for class discussion, this book will be an invaluable resource for students of international relations and security studies. K.M. Fierke is Professor of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews, and has taught or held research fellowships at the universities of Minnesota, Amsterdam, Oxford and Queen's Belfast. She is the author of Changing Games, Changing Strategies (1998), Diplomatic Interventions: Conflict and Change in a Globalizing World (2005), Political Self Sacrifice: Agency, Body and Emotion in International Relations (2013) numerous book chapters or articles on constructivism and security in prominent journals and co-editor of Constructing International Relations: The Next Generation (2001).

Over the last decade the increasing phenomenon of suicide terrorism has raised questions about how it might be rational for individuals to engage in such acts. This book examines a range of different forms of political self-sacrifice, including hunger strikes, self-burning and non-violent martyrdom, all of which have taken place in resistance to foreign interference. Karin Fierke sets out to study the strategic and emotional dynamics that arise from the image of the suffering body, including political contestation surrounding the identification of the victim as a terrorist or martyr, the meaning of the death as suicide or martyrdom and the extent to which this contributes to the reconstruction of community identity. Political Self-Sacrifice offers a counterpoint to rationalist accounts of international terrorism in terrorist and security studies, and is a novel contribution to the growing literature on the role of emotion and trauma in international politics.

Argues that war is a social construction. In so doing, it unsettles the definition of intervention, as a coercive interference by one state in the affairs of another, to examine the range of communicative or 'diplomatic' practices which through their presence modify the experience of war

The commentary reflects on the contributions to the forum in light of the overall objectives of Snapshots from Home: Mind, Action and Strategy in an Uncertain World.

AbstractMany of the violent conflicts of the post-Cold War period have involved peoples who have historically been victims of interstate politics. Compromise is highly problematic in contexts of this kind, given that sovereign powers tend to attach the label 'terrorism' to acts of resistance and the resistance tends to claim an experience of injustice. Given a situation where compromise is seen by actors on both sides to be impossible, how would anything other than a 'rotten compromise' be possible? The article develops a framework called the Warden's Dilemma which is then put to use in the empirical exploration of two historical cases: the hunger strikes in Northern Ireland in 1980–81 and the martyrdom of Polish Solidarity's priest, Jerzy Popieluszko, a few years later.

While the strategic objectives of those who organize suicide terrorism may be explained in rationalist terms, the choice of those who volunteer to be candidates for death is far more problematic, given the high premium, at least within international relations theory, on survival as the ultimate rational end. The rational choice model also makes it difficult to take language or emotion into account as factors in constituting the meaning of the act. This article begins with an observation: In Western discourse the acts of human bombs tend to be referred to as 'suicide terrorism' or 'suicide bombings'; by contrast the terminology of 'martyrdom operations' is more prevalent in the Arab and Muslim Middle East, or among Islamists in the West. The first section of the paper examines the importance of context for understanding the rationality of an action. The second explores 'martyrdom' and 'suicide' as two distinct frameworks for giving meaning to an act of voluntary death in the post-9/11 world, and the emotional dynamics that link these two 'games' to a larger structural logic. The third section further develops the structural logic that emerges from the interaction of the two. The conclusions analyse the significance of this argument for rethinking both the structural dynamics of this international context, as well as the theoretical model of games. Adapted from the source document.