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Security Studies: An Introduction, 4th edition, is the most comprehensive textbook available on the subject, providing students with in-depth coverage of traditional and critical approaches and an essential grounding in the debates, frameworks, and issues of the contemporary security agenda.

This textbook introduces students to the sub-field of critical security studies through a detailed yet accessible survey of emerging theories and practices. This 3rd edition contains two new chapters - on 'Ontological Security' and '(In)Security and the everyday' - and has been fully revised and updated. Written in an accessible and clear manner, Critical Security Studies: offers a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to critical security studies locates critical security studies within the broader context of social and political theory evaluates fundamental theoretical positions in critical security studies against backdrop of new security challenges. The book is divided into two main parts. Part I, 'Approaches', surveys the newly extended and contested theoretical terrain of critical security studies: Constructivist theories, Critical Theory, Feminist and gender approaches, Postcolonial perspectives, Poststructuralism and International Political Sociology, Ontological security, and Securitisation theory. Part II, 'Issues', examines how these various theoretical approaches have been put to work in critical considerations of environmental and planetary security, health, human security and development, technology and warfare, migration and border security, (in)security and the everyday, and terror, risk and resilience. The historical and geographical scope of the book is deliberately broad and each of the chapters in Part II concretely illustrates one or more of the approaches discussed in Part I, with clear internal referencing allowing the text to act as a holistic learning tool for students.

Security Studies: Critical Perspectives introduces the analysis of security from critical and interdisciplinary perspectives. Taking a student-centred approach to understanding contemporary security themes and cases, it provides an accessible set of analytic steps so that students develop the critical thinking skills and confidence to ask important questions about security and our worlds in contemporary politics. Common-sense security assumptions that reproduce forms of oppression and domination are revealed and their justifications decentred while perspectives inclusive of class, gender and sexualities, ethnicity and race, religion, disability, culture and ideology, political belonging, and the global south are introduced. In doing so, the authors combine critical analysis with concrete empirical issues that connect students to the social and political worlds around them.

Abstract
A few years after the end of the Cold War, Richard Betts argued that a specter was haunting the field of strategic studies, "the specter of peace," and asked whether that field should survive the new era. Today, more than two decades after the 9/11 attacks that stimulated the field of homeland security (HS) studies, we could ask a similar question about that field. Should it survive as an academic field of study, and if so, how should it adapt and change in an era in which concerns about terrorism have in large part been overtaken by great power competition, climate change, AI, pandemics and a host of other asymmetric threats? Is it/can it be an academic discipline? A profession? What questions does it ask and what contributions does it make to practitioners, policy makers, or society? This article reviews the state of HS studies today and what sub-fields and disciplines it touches. It examines HS publication and education in the United States and evaluates the contributions that HS studies have made to date. This review suggests homeland security studies should indeed survive, as a meta discipline that serves a valuable purpose by addressing the question of how governments and societies should best prepare for and respond to threats to their security that can range from local to global in scope, from small to large in scale, and from tame to wicked in character.

Published between 1985 and 1998, the fivevolumes in thissetexplore a wide range of themes and topics relating to postcolonial security studies. Offering both broader overviews of political and military regimes across the world, and more focused examinations of specific areas and conflicts, such as Africa, Cuba, and the Falklands War, they provide a wealth of information that will appeal to those with an interest in military and strategic studies, political and military history, political and military theory, and international relations.

"This new and updated edition of International Security Studies provides students with a comprehensive introduction to the subject of security studies, with a strong emphasis on the use of case studies to illustrate theoretical debates. In addition to presenting the major theoretical perspectives, the book examines a range of important and controversial topics in covering both traditional military and non-military security issues such as WMD proliferation, humanitarian intervention, food security and environmental security. The volume also offers a wide range of case studies providing detailed analyses of important global security issues. The 37 chapters contain pedagogical features and recommended further reading and is divided into five thematic sections: Conceptual and Theoretical Military Security Non-Military Security Institutions and Security Case Studies Updates for the second edition include: New chapters on cybersecurity and the insecurity of the LGBT community Substantial revisions to existing chapters to incorporate analysis of important international political developments including: the Trump Presidency; 'Brexit'; North Korean nuclear standoff; the Syrian Civil War; Yemen Civil War; Mediterranean migration crisis; Climate change diplomacy and the Sustainable Development Goals. This textbook will be essential reading for all students of security studies and highly recommended for students of critical security studies, human security, peace and conflict studies, foreign policy and International Relations in general"--

"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"--

The growing literature on ontological security theory (OST) in international relations, ontological security studies (OSS), is characterized by great internal diversity. This internal pluralism is one of its greatest strengths, but it is also potentially confusing, for example, when different works using an ontological security lens arrive at contradictory conclusions without it being obvious why. In order to make sense of this diversity, this article traces two interrelated conceptual divergences related to the notion of anxiety. The first one concerns the observation that anxiety is seemingly both debilitating and an impediment to action, as well as a call to action, inspiring adaptation and change. The second divergence centers on whether ontological security is at all attainable, which is largely a matter of whether anxiety is best understood as an extraordinary and temporally limited condition or as an ever-present and normal part of life. This article argues that the divergent answers to these questions, and the problems they give rise to, are primarily the result of ambiguity with regard to the key concept of anxiety. The malleable nature of the concept of anxiety engenders deviating interpretations and applications among scholars. While awareness of these issues already goes a long way toward making sense of some of the diversity within OSS, this article further suggests ways to increase the conceptual clarity of anxiety and to address the two issues of change and attainability. Doing so increases our conceptual understanding of OST.

This book demonstrates that the disciplinary boundaries present within international relations approaches to security studies are redundant when examining social media, and inter- and multi-disciplinary analysis is key. A key result of the analysis undertaken is that when examining the social media sphere security scholars need to "expect the unexpected". This is because social media enables users to subvert, contest and create security narratives with symbols and idioms of their choice which can take into account "traditional" security themes, but also unexpected and under explored themes such as narratives from the local context of the users' towns and cities, and the symbolism of football clubs. The book also explores the complex topography of social media when considering constructions of security. The highly dynamic topography of social media is neither elite dominated and hierarchical as the Copenhagen School conceptualises security speak. However, neither is it completely flat and egalitarian as suggested by the vernacular security studies' non-elite approach. Rather, social media's topography is shifting and dynamic, with individuals gaining influence in security debates in unpredictable ways. In examining social media this book engages with the emancipatory burden of critical security studies. This book argues that it remains unfulfilled on social media and rather presents a "thin" notion of discursive emancipation where social media does provide the ability for previously excluded voices to participate in security debates, even if this does not result in their direct emancipation from power hierarchies and structures offline