Course Description and Aims

Critical Security Studies

Paul Roe

Course Description and Aims

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.

Learning Outcomes

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.

Teaching Method

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. 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.

Method of Assessment

Each student will be assessed through a combination of seminar contribution and written work. In terms of seminar contribution, each student will make one oral presentation. For written work, two papers are required; one mid-term and one end-term. For the mid-term paper, students will write a Literature Review of 2,500 words (+/- 10%); for the end term, a Research Paper of 4,500 words (+/- 10%). The topics for the papers are of the students’ own choosing, although each paper much reflect a different topic. For the Research Paper, 40% of the overall grade is allocated; for the Literature Review, 30%; for the oral presentation, 20%; with the remaining 10% being allocated

to seminar attendance and contribution.

Guidelines for Assessment

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.

AWork of exceptional quality that authoritatively demonstrates knowledge and understanding of the topic. Well argued, organised, and structured. Critical awareness of the theoretical and/or empirical material, and shows originality of thought.

A-Work of high quality that is well above the average for a postgraduate paper. Not necessarily faultless in terms of the above, but still shows some originality of thought.

B+A very competent piece of work displaying substantial knowledge and understanding. There may well be room for improvement in terms of organisation and structure, although in general terms the work is solid.

BAgain a piece of some competence. More improvement than the above will be required organisationally and structurally. Work at this level may also display some oversimplification and irrelevance.

B-An adequate piece of work, but where significant improvements must be made. Too much oversimplification and irrelevance. Required points are missing. Work may also contain serious grammatical errors.

C+Inadequate. A work displaying far too many of the above weaknesses.

F A totally unacceptable piece of work. Fail.

Week 1/Seminar 1. Introduction

Week 1/Seminar 2. No Class

Week 2/Seminar 3. Third Generation Strategic Culture: Global Norms

Key Text:

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

Week 2/Seminar 4. Third Generation Strategic Culture: Institutional Culture

Key Text:

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

Further Reading:

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 & IverNeuman, ‘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.

Week 3/Seminar 6. No Class

Week 4/Seminar 7. The ‘Copenhagen School’: Societal Security

Key Text:

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

Further Reading:

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.

BuzanWaever, ‘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 8. Ontological Security: Social Dependence and Routinisation

Key Text:

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

Week 5/Seminar 9.Ontological Security: Shame. Honour, and Self Narrative

Key Text:

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

Further Reading:

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

Janice BiallyMattern, ‘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).

Week 6/Seminar 11.‘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.

Further Reading:

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.

HolgerStritzel, ‘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.

Week 6/Seminar 12. Contextualising Securitization

Key Text:

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

Further Reading:

JuhaVuori, ‘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.

HakanSeckinelgin, 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 7/Seminar 13. 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.

Further Reading:

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 7/Seminar 14. The ‘Paris School’: Securitization as Practice

Key Text:

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

Further Reading:

Ayse Ceyhan & AnastassiaTsoukala, ‘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’.

Week 8/Seminar 15. Risk

Key Text:

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

Further Reading:

William Clapton, ‘Risk in International Relations’, International Relations, vol.25, no.3, 2011.

Craig McClean, Alan Patterson & John Williams, ‘Risk Assessment, Policy-Making and the Limits of Knowledge: The Precautionary Principle in International Relations’, International Relations, vol.23, no.4, 2010.

MikkelVedby 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.

Week 8/Seminar 16, Week 9/Seminar 17, & Week 9/Seminar 18. 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.

Week 10/Seminar 19. Desecuritization

Key Text:

Lene Hansen, ‘Reconstructing Desecuritization: The Normative-Political in the Copenhagen School and Directions for How to Apply it’, Review of International Studies, vol.38, no.3, 2012.

Further Reading:

Paul Roe, ‘Securitization and Minority Rights: Conditions of Desecuritization’, Security Dialogue, vol.35, no.3, 2004.

MattiJutila, ‘Desecuritizing Minority Rights: Against Determinism’, Security Dialogue, vol.37, no.2, 2006.

Roe, ‘Reconstructing Identities or Managing Minorities? Desecuritizing Minority Rights: A Response to Jutila’, Security Dialogue, vol.37, no.3, 2006.

Robert Miles & Dietrich Thranhardt (eds.), Migration and European Integration: The Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion (London: Pinter, 1995), Chapter 3: Jef Huysmans, ‘Migrants as a Security Problem: Dangers of “Securitizing” Societal Issues’.

Huysmans, ‘The Question of the Limit: Desecuritization and the Aesthetics of Horror in Political Realism’, Millennium, vol.27, no.3, 1998.

Mark Salter, ‘Securitization and Desecuritization: A Dramaturgical Analysis of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority’, Journal of International Relations and Development, Vol.11, no.4, 2008.

Week 10/Seminar 20. Marginalisations, Nothings, Images

Key Text:

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.

Further Reading:

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.

VibekeSchouTjalve, ‘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’,International Relations, vol.20, no.4, 2006.

Michael 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 Texts:

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.

Further Reading:

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

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