Theorising Security Flashcards
Exemplify an author who highlights the merit of security within IR:
Barry Buzan
What is security like as a discipline within IR? How can it be interpreted?
Your definition of security depends on your theoretical or metatheoretical background:
- Economic
- Societal
- Environmental
Describe the security dilemma:
2 points to mention here
- So called other minds problem
- Ambiguous weapons
policy makers must choose how to respond or understand the situation in an existential condition of uncertainty
The security dilemma represents what?
A mainstream approach at the heart of IR which allows the understanding of security as post positive (theory from within as oppose to external value free analysis)
Describe traditional / neo realist security
State centric analysis:
- focus on material capabilities
- how can we protect a state through military means
Describe neoliberal security. Give two thinkers associated with the discipline
- Doyle
- Russett
- DPT, neoliberal institutionalism
what did Buzan say about his theory of mature anarchy?
- “excessively self referential security policies are ultimately self defeating”
- Essentially a theory that says states should act maturely in a context of anarchy. *But the emergence of international society is a long and uneven process
Describe Jarvis idea of security regime (1983) (variation of mature anarchy)
- Exemplified EU powers all moderate individualistic and competitive polices expecting others to reciprocate
Describe Deutsche security community (1957) (variation of mature anarchy)
- Community or region where large scale violence has become very unlikely or even unthinkable
Describe common security in Palme report (1982) (variation of mature anarchy)
- “joint survival” NOT “mutual descruction”
What is Buzan and Weaver’s regional security complex theory? (1983)
- Interdependence within regions but not between regions
What did the Copenhagen school do?
- Challenged view that military state centrism was the only way to view security
- Military, political, economic, societal and environmental security
Buzan wrote what as part of the Copenhagen school?
- People, states and fear
- He made traditional security as subset of a wider definition of security in 1983
Why was the end of the cold war significant for security studies?
- Security studies had failed to predict its end
What did the end of the cold war mean for security studies?
- Questioning of the meaning of security
- Broadening the discipline: who or what was the threat now? How can we protect ourselves from new threats like the environment
Give quote that exemplifies the influence that social constructivism can have on security from Booth
what does this quote tell us about the social constructivist view on security studies?
- “security is something we define, not something which we respond to”
- SCs argue we have created the idea of security
- Based on IR assumptions
- Those assumptions can be associated through socialisation for example
Adler and Barnet apply social constructivism to what theory? (a variation of security communities
- Deutsch’s theory of security communities
- they say that security is what states make of it
What did Katzenstein argue in the culture of national security in 1996?
- Security interests are defined by actors
According to Katzenstein, what is social constructivism trying to do?
- Find a middle way between material structures like weapons and ideational structures and the influence they have
In terms of securitisation who came up with the idea of security constituting a speech act?
- Buzan and Waever
- if we assume that securitisation is construciton of a threat then it is a duty to deconstruct it
What is a speech act?
- The way we talk about IR has a specific function, to promote or legitimise a certain action in IR.
Exemplify securitisation of an issue by speech acts
- E.g. UKIP want to leave EU, migrants security threat, media contribute to the securitisation of the issue
- Islamiphobia another e.g.
How does Booth describe critical security studies?
- “united more by perceived defects in the orthodoxy than by any particular alternative vision”
- He saw the idea of studying security as an emancipatory activity
What do critical security studies theorists argue?
- There is no concise alternate vision provided
- Argue that critical approaches to security studies deepen it
- they understand studying security as an emancipatory project to look and change international relations reflected in critical security studies
