Abstract
With the demise of the Cold War, policy-makers claimed to recognize a plethora of new security threats - a veritable ‘dysplasia’ of the global body politic (Manning 2000: 195). In the face of rogue states, loose nukes, international organized crime and global terrorism, among other menaces, government and non-government organizations devoted considerable time and resources to addressing new insecurities. Academics too have tried to rework the concept of security. As David Baldwin wrote in 1997, in the fields of International Relations (IR) and Security Studies, “[r]edefining ‘security’ has recently become something of a cottage industry” (Baldwin 1997: 5), although the difficulty in defining ‘security’ had already exercized the minds of scholars over several decades.1
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References
See, inter alia, Wolfers 1962; Krell 1979; Buzan 1983; Ullman 1983; Ayoob 1983/4; Wiberg/Øberg 1984; Varas 1986; Bay 1987; Mathews 1989; Walt 1991; Huysmans 1995.
Despite their internecine disputes over issues like relative versus absolute gains and the extent of cooperation under anarchy (e.g. Baldwin 1993a), we include realism, neo-realism and neo-liberal institutionalism under the single rubric ‘rationalism’ because they share the same substantive and meta-theoretical assumptions (e.g. Keohane 1988; Katzenstein/Keohane/Krasner 1998).
States are generally defined in Weberian terms, as administrative organizations issuing binding decisions for a population and territory, and the ultimate repository for the legitimate use of force (e.g. Weber 1947: 156).
Military power is not the only relevant form of power, even for rationalists. It is recognized that “what is sometimes termed’ statecraft’–arms control, diplomacy, crisis management, for example”(Walt 1991: 213)-can also provide security, and that economic power is necessary for military power. Nonetheless, military threats constitute the ultimate insecurity and military power is the ultimate resort.
Challenges to the rationalist perspective on security vary enormously in their philosophical and methodological approaches. However, they are minimally united in their desire to rconceptualize security by broadening its scope. Examples include Krell1979; Buzan 1983; Barnet 1988; Matthews 1989; Boutros-Ghali 1992; Kupchan/ Kupchan 1995.
Examples includeMartinussen 1997; Duffield 2000, 2001; Dewitt/Hernandez 2003.
Early examples include Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues 1982; Buzan1983; Bay 1987; Tickner 1992.
See, for example, Thomas 2001; McRae 2001; Paris 2001.
Kofi Annan, 1999: “Letters to Future Generations: Towards a Culture of Peace”, at: <http://www.unesco. org/opi2/lettres/TextAnglais/AnnanE.html>.
Wæver’s concept of ‘securitization’ (1995) discusses this idea more comprehensively.
This section and the next draw on Weldes/ Laffey/ Gusterson/ Duvall 1999.
Relations of constitution differ from causal relations. The process of constitution is definitional: it explains how “a particular phenomenon is that phenomenon and not something else.” It delineates the “possibility conditions for the existence of phenomena”; how, within a discourse, some phenomena are possible such that they are defined in that discourse as those phenom-ena (Majeski/ Sylvan 1991: 8).
For approaches to the constitution of self and other in a variety of cultural processes, see, inter alia, Campbell 1994, 1998a; Connolly 1991; Doty 1993; Drinnon 1990; Greenblatt 1991; Neumann 1996; Spurr 1993; Todorov 1982.
SeeWinder’s (2004) interesting history of immigration into the territories now called ‘Britain’.
Gerri Peev: “Test Ignites Questions of Britishness”, in: The Scotsman, 1 November 2005; at: <http://news. Scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=16&id=2176262005>; “Test of Britishness for Immigrants”, CNN.com, 31 October 2005; at: <http://editi0n.cnn.com/2005/ WORLD/europe/10/31/uk.citizen.test. reut/>.
Ben Russell: “Introducing the Government’s ‘Britishness’ Test: Only Foreigners Need Pass. Natives Can Bask in Ignorance”, in: The Independent Online Edition, 16 November 2005; at: < http://news.independent. co.uk/uk/politics/article32379o.ece>.
UK Home Office: “UK Population Project”, 18 December 2003; at: <http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/ind/en/ home/news/archive/2003/december/uk_population_project.html>.
Examples of this approach include Campbell 1998a; Butler 2004; Ling/Agathangelou 2004; Shepherd 2006.
Kevin Anderson: “US Muslims Suffer Backlash”, in: BBC News, 19 November 2002; at: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/world/americas/2488829.stm>; Islamic Human Rights Commission, 2002: “The Hidden Victims of September 11: The Backlash Against Muslims in the UK”; at: <http:// vvww.ihrc.org.uk/file/reporto2sepo6backlash. pdf>.
As mentioned above, this notion draws heavily on Butler’ s theorizing of gender as performative. Butler sees gender as the organizational matrix that orders the emergence of the subject “within and as the matrix of gender relations themselves” (Butler 1993: 7), just as this perspective sees security discourses as ordering the identity framework of sovereignty. Both regulatory ideals gender and sovereignty — are premised on a system of binary logic that this approach seeks to problematize.
“‘Threats to UK Security’ Detained”, in: BBC News, 8 August 2005; at: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/ hi/uk/4141000.stm>.
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Shepherd, L.J., Weldes, J. (2008). Security: The State (of) Being Free From Danger?. In: Brauch, H.G., et al. Globalization and Environmental Challenges. Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace, vol 3. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75977-5_39
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