Suchergebnisse

The question of research methods, and their role in the field, is a major source of contention for IR scholars. We can, however, discuss method, methodology, and innovation without revising or revisiting old debates. Methods do not have to be divisive, or disciplining. A frank discussion of research design, methods, and methodological preferences is essential to innovation and reproducibility. This intervention is a call for increased transparency in IR research outputs; IR theorists should not erase their own footprints from their publications and openly admit and discuss failures as productive moments in research. The act of disappearing, which has become the norm in the name of professionalised publications, robs the field of the productive pedagogical potential of research methods. The true impact of research rests in its pedagogical potential. As researchers, our job is thus to find a sensitive balance between not determining the outcome of the research from the get-go by making it all about our preferences and opinions, but also not making the impact of our preferences and opinions disappear completely. Building on this premise, this intervention discusses the significant pedagogical potential of research methods, reproducibility and discussion of failures in International Relations.

Developments in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) will have a significant impact on the way we study international relations. Opportunities related to data processing and automated reasoning that emerge through developments in complex algorithms will inevitably generate a debate on research methods in social sciences. Algorithms provide novel and innovative ways to sort and make sense of digital data. Applications of 'big data' and its potential uses in the social sciences remain understudied in IR. The field has not fully picked up on the potential uses of algorithmic processing for research. This article looks at the ethical questions that arise from the use of algorithmic data processing and automated reasoning. In particular, the article asks whether there should be any ethical limitations on the ways we collect data to be processed by algorithms.

AbstractTo advance the on-going debate on Securitisation Theory (ST), we argue that the important questions of audience and attention can be addressed through careful historical study. In an analysis of the securitising moves concerning the American military base on Diego Garcia, we are able to demonstrate that the Copenhagen and Paris Schools are not methodologically incompatible, and empirically that public attention for security issues has a tendency to dissipate without continual discursive investment.

Freezing is a common sign of panic, a response to accidents or events that overflow our capacity to react. Just as all civil airspace was cleared after the 9/11 attacks, the US-Canada border was also frozen, causing economic slowdowns. Border policies are caught between these two panics: security failures and economic crisis. To escape this paradox, American and Canadian authorities have implemented a series of security measures to make the border 'smarter', notably the implementation of biometric identity documents and surveillance by UAV Predator drones. Psychoanalytic theory can help us explain why the Canadian and American governments have invested so much money for so little evident or measurable increase in either security or economic flows. The article uses the notion of phantastic objects to explain these (over-)reactions to risk management at the US-Canada border.

"This textbook surveys new and emergent methods for doing research in critical security studies, filling a gap in the literature. The 2nd edition has been revised and updated. This textbook is a practical guide to research design in this increasingly established field. Arguing for a serious attention to questions of research design and method, the book develops accessible scholarly overviews of key methods used across critical security studies, such as ethnography, discourse analysis, materiality and corporeal methods. It draws on prominent examples of each method's objects of analysis, relevant data, and forms of data collection. The book's defining feature is the collection of diverse accounts of research design from scholars working within each method, each of which is a clear and honest recounting of a specific project's design and development. This second edition is extensively revised and expanded. Its 33 contributors reflect the sheer diversity of critical security studies today, representing various career stages, scholarly interests, and identities. This book is systematic in its approach to research design but keeps a reflexive and pluralist approach to the question of methods and how they can be used. The second edition has a new forward-looking conclusion examining future research trends and challenges for the field. This book will be essential reading for upper-level students and researchers in the field of critical security studies, and of much interest to students in International Relations and across the social sciences"--