This chapter explores what a critical approach to UN peacekeeping entails and highlights the valuable contributions of Critical Security Studies (CSS) to capture the nature and significance of peace operations in international politics. It shows how CSS questions the values and representations that inform UN peacekeeping and the political order that peacekeeping interventions shape, promote or sustain. It further discusses how CSS unpacks peacekeeping (often mundane and daily) practices and their political and social implications and takes into account non-traditional security issues. The chapter then relies on CSS theoretical and methodological tools to study the specific case of the rise of environmental practices in UN peacekeeping. Drawing on the concepts of securitisation and environmentalisation, it demonstrates how UN peacekeeping has been framed as relevant to environmental policies, while contributing to a broader process of securitisation of the environment.
The main goal of this article is to present problems related to using a feminist approach in security studies. The starting point are some of the basic terms used in the internally diverse sphere of feminist theory and their application in the field of political science. An attempt is also made to define the objectives of selected feminist studies that can be used in the analysis of domestic and international security issues. The main thesis of the article is the assertion that security studies are dominated by assigned gender stereotypes and meanings embedded in the so-called male gaze.
Societal security, as developed by the Copenhagen School of Security, is an extremely important area of the broader contemporary security concept which, in addition to military issues, also takes into account a number of other threats coming from the fields such as political, economic, societal or environmental ones. In the study of contemporary societal security, a number of concepts specific to the theory of complex systems, such as complexity, self-organization, the threshold of chaos, etc., have been borrowed, substantially enriching the hermeneutics of security discourse on the basis of non-mechanistic interpretations of social systems. This article aims to show that in the study of societal security the use of tools specific to the study of modern complex systems has produced quite interesting results, which could give a new meaning to the research in this field. At the same time, the paper presents some conclusions regarding the methodology of analysis specific to the science of complexity applicable to the field of societal security.
Since the 1990s, (in)security in post-Soviet Eurasia has been conceptualized by International Relations scholars as being mainly connected to the permanence of regional violent conflicts and the challenges of fragile sovereignty. After 9/11, terrorism as a broad category has also been added to the lexicon. These views place state security at the centre of analysis, and focus mainly on military aspects of security. This article addresses the limitations of analyses of post-Soviet Eurasian security shaped by these two trends and puts forwards critical alternatives to analyse insecurity in this region. Building on insights from critical security studies, namely Ken Booth's work and his central concept of emancipation, as well as the nexus between human rights and security – human security –, this paper presents a new framework of analysis for regional (in)security in post-Soviet Eurasia. The main goal is to reflect on the innovative aspects of this approach in terms of understanding increasingly complex (in)security dynamics in this region, and overcome what have been mainly realist and realpolitik views of regional security.
The monograph Contemporary Security Studies: An Introduction to methodological, research and theoretical foundations of security is the result of many years of comprehensive research of the phenomenon of security and the endangering of security and it is the outcome of the research effort aimed to prove the scientific character of the security field. The fact is that security in the Republic of Serbia is still not in the national nomenclature of scientific fields. Instead, it is claimed, with some reason, but far from having absolute right to it, by political scientists, jurists, soldiers, ecologists, and similar scientific and educational, and professional profiles. In spite of everything, the theory and practice of security have developed to the point of growing into an independent scientific field within the social and humanity sciences, and to a great extent within the natural and technical and technological sciences. Therefore, we expect security to be declared an independent scientific field within the social and humanity sciences, and this monograph to be one of the numerous and firm arguments in accomplishing that aim. Respecting the postulates of the methodology of scientific research, professional ethics in higher education and scientific and research activities, but also the standards of the Code of Ethics of Scientific and Research Work of the Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies, it is our duty to briefly elaborate the history of this book. Specifically, the ideas for the texts on security, endangering of security, and the methodology of exploring security phenomena, have been taken from the traditional Belgrade Security School that has been developed for years in the Education and Research Centre of the Security Institute, the former (Service, Department of) State Security, in the Security Information Agency, at the Faculty of Security Studies, University of Belgrade (former Faculty of Civil Defence, before that, Faculty of National Defence), and in police education (the Secondary School of Interior Affairs in Sremska Kamenica, the College of Interior Affairs in Zemun, Police Academy in Belgrade, and the Academy of Criminalistics and Police Studies in Zemun). The presented scientific findings obtained scientific verification, to a smaller extent, by being published in the first and second edition of the course book National Security by the author Saša Mijaković PhD (Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies, 2009, 2011). It was in the first three chapters of the course book (Methodological basis of national security, Security, and Endangering security), on around 100 pages. The development of scientific thought has led, over time, to the justified need for distancing the matter of the security basis/introduction to contemporary security studies from the matter of national security, and to intensive abstraction of the matter of the security basis in relation to the operationalized matter of the national security. The results of the distinction that refer to the basic categories of security are incorporated in this monograph. The scientific findings taken from the course book National Security (2009, 2011) constitute up to 30% of this monograph. Therefore, we strived to accomplish that Contemporary Security Studies: An Introduction to methodological, research and theoretical foundations of security meets all normative and ethic criteria of a new scientific publication, which was confirmed by the reviewers. Meanwhile, in the course book National Security (third edition, Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies, Belgrade, 2015), these contents were, to a great extent, excluded and replaced by a new text. Finally, we were again honoured to have the publishing and copyrights remain in the hands of the Academy, to which we devoted our careers.
Offering a framework for ethical assessment, this article draws attention to the ethical issues accompanying empirical research on security. Speaking to the various subfields and schools of broadly conceived applied security studies, we classify the many ethical issues specific to empirical research on security, conflict, and political violence into researcher-related problems, subject-related problems, and result-related problems. We evaluate the importance and variations of these issues and highlight potential mitigation pathways. This effort brings together an existing but fragmented literature and builds upon the authors' own experiences in several subfields and schools of "hands-on" research on security and political violence.
Intrigued about a political puzzle of militarisation, the argument presented here is built on three anchoring concepts that, combined, demonstrate what a feminist security studies take on 'the political' can offer: it involves a focus on the everyday as the site where the political puzzle is found; 'dance' is used as a methodological metaphor to explain what the political puzzle of militarisation is; and 'family' is the gendered analytical concept used to show how Remembrance events are normalising militarisation as the character of society. More specifically, the first section disentangles 'the political' theoretically by negotiating ontological tensions between 'emancipation' and poststructuralist epistemology. It ends with a poststructuralist feminist analytical focus on 'the political' as bodies in the everyday. The second section explores 'the political' methodologically through the idea of militarisation as a choreographed security practice in the mediatised every day. A nuanced way to explore the normalising process of militarisation is presented, conceptualised as dance due to the centrality of subtle movements, bodies and emotions. The third section illustrates the dance of militarisation empirically with an analysis of a choreographed political performance of a 2013 Remembrance event in the United Kingdom. Here, the notion of 'family' is used to unmake common sense and to make feminist sense of the hidden politics of militarisation. The article argues that feminist security studies 'enter' the political differently and, thus, performs critical security studies in a way that opens up a space to move beyond the dominant narrative of our discipline. It concludes with a call for letting our political puzzles, rather than the academic field, guide our research design as a way to ensure a more creative engagement with our disciplinary future.
Security studies privileges the study of civil wars in some contexts over others. The field's leading journals mostly publish studies of armed conflicts in Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Armed conflicts in Asia receive comparatively little attention, despite their prevalence and protracted nature. Against the background of our own empirical archive—the decades-old but largely ignored civil war in Myanmar—we ask why some conflicts draw more scholarly interest than others and why this uneven attention matters. In doing so, we argue that the empirical selectivity bias in the study of civil war and armed conflict reflects (1) institutional entanglements between the field of security studies and Western foreign policy; and (2) sociological factors that shape the formation of scholarly subjectivities and pertain to methodological challenges. This uneven empirical landscape shapes our conceptual understanding of civil wars. In fact, prominent debates within leading security studies journals surrounding the nature of civil war and armed conflict are inseparable from the empirical contexts in which they emerged. Leveling such an uneven empirical landscape thus generates opportunities for discussing conflict, insecurity, and violence in a different light. In shedding light on this issue, we urge closer attention to questions of place, time, and power in the scholarly production of knowledge and ignorance.
Forum: The State of Feminist Security Studies: Continuing the Conversation. This forum comprises seven pieces conceived in response to the recent Politics & Gender Critical Perspectives section that featured contributions from Carol Cohn, Valerie Hudson
Forum: The State of Feminist Security Studies: Continuing the Conversation. This forum comprises seven pieces conceived in response to the recent Politics & Gender Critical Perspectives section that featured contributions from Carol Cohn, Valerie Hudson
In 2010 the Republic of Serbia adopted the National Action Plan (NAP) for the implementation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 "Women, Peace and Security", which stipulates that on the basis of gender equality UN member states should build and adapt mechanisms for conflict resolution and inclusion of women in all levels of decision-making. An important role in the activities undertaken to achieve the goals defined by the National Action Plan is assigned to the ministry in charge of education (currently the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development). These activities include raising awareness of potential conflicts, launching educational programs about gender aspects of conflicts, and introducing the subject matter of gender equality and gender-based violence at all levels of education and specialization in the security sector. Given that the Faculty of Security Studies of the University of Belgrade trains its students to perform a wide range of jobs in the security sector, the introduction of said subject matter at this higher education institution has special importance. In order to determine the extent to which this subject matter is currently being taught at the Faculty of Security Studies and at the same time to work toward the NAP goals, we have conducted a pilot study which included an analysis of the undergraduate forms of teaching such as seminars and workshops. It is our belief that educating male and female students to perform jobs in the security and defense systems and better participate in civil society requires that this subject matter be incorporated into the existing undergraduate curriculum at this higher education institution and that the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia assume a more active role in attaining the goals of the National Action Plan and achieving gender equality as an imperative of democratic societies curriculum and course syllabuses as well as the opinions of first- and second-year male and female students on gender equality. Having analyzed the syllabuses of undergraduate courses, we have established that the issues of gender equality, gender-sensitive address forms, gender-based violence, and the role and position of women in the security and defense systems, are underrepresented in course syllabuses, teaching units and primary literature. Furthermore, the opinion poll of the first- and second-year male and female undergraduate students on gender equality, conducted in June 2015 at the Faculty, led us to the conclusion that despite the students' awareness of this subject matter, certain gender-based stereotypes nonetheless exist. Also, the majority of respondents recognized the need for incorporating this subject matter into the curriculum and for organizing informal.
This paper is closed access until 26 February 2020. ; International Relations (IR) has increasingly paid attention to critical pedagogy. Feminist, post-colonial and poststructuralist IR scholarship, in particular, have long been advancing the discus-sions about how to create a pluralist and democratic classroom where 'the others' of politics can be heard by the students, who can critically reflect upon complex power relations in global poli-tics. Despite its normative position, Critical Security Studies (CSS) has so far refrained from join-ing this pedagogical conversation. Deriving from the literatures of postcolonial and feminist pedagogical practices, it is argued that an IR scholar in the area of CSS can contribute to the pro-duction of a critical political subject in the 'uncomfortable classroom', who reflects on violent practices of security. Three pedagogical methods will be introduced: engaging with the students' lifeworlds, revealing the positionality of security knowledge claims, and opening up the class-room to the choices about how the youth's agency can be performed beyond the classroom. The argument is illustrated through the case of forced migration with specific reference to IR and Pol-itics students' perceptions of Syrian refugees in Turkey. The article advances the discussions in critical IR pedagogy and encourages CSS scholarship to focus on teaching in accordance with its normative position.
This article is a contribution to transcending the dichotomy between deconstruction and reconstruction in critical security studies. In the first part, I review dominant (Western/liberal) logics of security and the main strands of critical security studies to argue for the need to: overcome the liberal framework of the balance among rights and freedom, with its inherent imbrication with the fantasy of absolute security; and, contra the ultimate conclusions of deconstructive critique, to take the desire for security seriously at the same time. By advocating for embracing the tensions that surface at this intersection, I then move to my reconstructive endeavor. I set out a meta-theory with both analytical and normative nature, agonistic security, inspired by the political theory developed by Mouffe and Laclau. Building on the opposition between antagonism and agonism, I argue that security belongs to the "political", and that it constitutes a field of struggle for politicization. I then argue for three conceptual shifts, which concretely define agonistic security: i) from an absolute/static to a relational/dynamic understanding of security; ii) from universalism to pluralism at a world scale; and iii) from the dominance of individual rights in Western/liberal thinking toward security as a collective endeavor. In conclusion, I take a step back and discuss the implications of agonistic security for the role of critique in security studies. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Critical Security Studies proceeds from the premise that words are world-making, that is that the ways we think about security are constitutive of the worlds of security we analyse. Turned to conventional security studies and the practices of global politics, this critical insight has revealed the ways in which the exclusions that are the focus of this conference have been produced. Perhaps most notable in this regard has been David Campbell's work, showing how the theory and practice of security are an identity discourse producing both insides and outsides, but the production of excluded others is a theme that runs through the critical scholarship on security in the past decade or more. This article turns the critical security studies gaze on itself, to explore the field's own complicity in the production of exclusions. The article reads three important instances of critical security studies for the inclusions and exclusions they produce: Ken Booth's Theory of World Securitv, the epilogue to David Campbell's Writing Security, and the CASE Collective Manifesto. The article concludes by asking about the nature of the inclusions and exclusions these divisions produce and the politics which those exclusions, in turn, (re)produce.
Security studies scholarship on nuclear weapons is particularly prone to self-censorship. In this essay, I argue that this self-censorship is problematic. The vulnerability, secrecy, and limits to accountability created by nuclear weapons (Deudney 2007, 256–57; Born, Gill, and Hânggi 2010; Cohen 2010, 147) call for responsible scholarship vis-à-vis the general public. This need for renewed and expanded scholarly responsibility is especially pressing given current plans among nuclear-weapon states to "modernize" their nuclear arsenals, committing their citizens and children to live in nuclear-armed countries and, a fortiori, a nuclear armed world (Mecklin 2015). Despite this need, the existing reflexive literature in security studies—calling for greater scholarly responsibility (see Steele and Amoureux 2016; Waever 2015, 95–100)—has neither specifically focused on nuclear weapons nor explored the forms of self-censorship identified here as shaping a modality of responsibility. In making this case, I define self-censorship in nuclear weapons scholarship as unnecessary boundaries on scholarly discourse within security studies. In this article, I identify three forms of self-censorship: an epistemological self-censorship that denies the normative foundations of nuclear studies; a rhetorically induced form of censorship that leads scholars to stay away from radical reorderings of the world (e.g., world government or the abolition of nuclear weapons) because of the joint rhetorical effects of the tropes of non-proliferation and deterrence; and, finally, a "presentist imaginal" form of self-censorship that leads scholars to obfuscate the implicit bets they make on their considered possible futures and their constitutive effects on the "present" they analyze. I do not claim that these are the only forms of self-censorship. I also leave aside the non-discursive structures of knowledge production and the institutional and political constraints on nuclear studies. However, as I show in the concluding section, these three ...