Abstract
On paper, it is easy to assume that critical peace studies1 and critical security studies share the same lexicon. Evidently, each discipline adopts various modes of immanent critique to expose and alleviate insecurities in different environments. They are equally similar insofar as their core concepts, peace and security, are easily recognizable and commonly deployed within academic and everyday grammars. Added to all of the above, these two words can be, and often are, used interchangeably. These interweavings are particularly visible in the United Nations’ thematic heading2 and the professed mission statements of its institutional arms.
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Notes
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On the idea of peace as an ECC, see S. Guzzini and D. Jung, ‘Copenhagen Peace Research’, in Contemporary Security Analysis and Copenhagen Peace Research, eds S. Guzzini and D. Jung (London: Routledge, 2004);
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See H. Patomäki, ‘How to Tell Better Stories about World Politics’, European Journal of International Relations 2, no. 1 (1996): 105–133.
O. Wæver used this phrasing in his 2004 paper ‘Aberystwyth, Paris, Copenhagen: New “Schools” in Security Theory and Their Origins between Core and Periphery’, paper presented at 45th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, 17–20 March. Also see the C.A.S.E Collective, ‘Critical Approaches to Security in Europe: A Networked Manifesto’, Security Dialogue 37, no. 4 (2006): 443–487;
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For extensive overviews of the evolving fields of critical security studies, see C. Aradau, J. Huysmans, A. Neal and N. Voelkner, Critical Security Methods: New Frameworks for Analysis (New International Relations) (London: Routledge, 2014);
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See K. M. Fierke, ‘Breaking the Silence: Language and Method in International Relations’, in Language, Agency and Politics in a Constructed World, ed. F. Debrix (Armonk and London: M.E. Sharpe, 2003);
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Notable deviations to this trend are ‘realist constructivist’ and ‘constructivist realist’ approaches. See J. S. Barkin, ‘Realist Constructivism’, International Studies Review 5, no. 3 (2003): 325–342;
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A. Lefevere, ‘Discourses on Translation: Recent, Less Recent and to Come’, Target 5, no. 2 (1993): 299–241.
The term ‘gate-keeping’ is also relevant here. See G. Sanghera and S. Thapar-Bjorkert, ‘Methodological Dilemmas: Gatekeepers and Positionality in Bradford’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 31, no. 3 (2008): 543–562.
For further discussion on the power of writing histories and security, see D. Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998);
R. L. Doty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
K. Booth, ‘The Human Faces of Terror: Reflections in a Cracked Looking Glass’, Critical Studies on Terrorism 1, no. 1 (2008): 65–79.
See T. Balzacq and S. Guzzini, ‘Introduction: What kind of theory — if any — is securitization?’, International Relations 29, no.1 (2015): 97–102.
For some connection points, see C. Burger and T. Villumsen, ‘Beyond the Gap: Relevance, Fields of Practice and the Securitizing Consequences of (Democratic Peace) Research’, Journal of International Relations and Development 10, no. 4 (2007): 417–448;
J. Hayes, ‘Identity and Securitisation in the Democratic Peace: The United States and the Divergence of Responses to India and Iran’s Nuclear Programmes’, International Studies Quarterly 53, no. 4 (2009): 977–999;
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For a full description of this framework, see B. Buzan, O. Wæver and J. deWilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
See N. G. Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989).
For this critique, see T. Barkawi, ‘From War to Security: Security Studies, the Wider Agenda and the Fate of the Study of War’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39, no. 3 (2011): 701–716;
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see C. Aradau, ‘Security, War, Violence — The Politics of Critique: A Reply to Barkawi’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41, no. 1 (2012): 112–123;
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See O. Wæver, ‘Peace and Security: Two Evolving Concepts and Their Changing Relationship’, in Globalization and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century, eds Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Czeslaw Mesjasz, John Grin, Pal Dunay, Navnita Chadha Behera, Béchir Chourou, Patricia Kameri-Mbote and P. H. Liotta, Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace, Vol. 3 (Berlin, Heidelberg and New York: Springer-Verlag, 2008).
O. P. Richmond, Peace in International Relations (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 133.
Also see V. Jabri, War and the Transformation of Global Politics (London: Palgrave, 2007).
It is not possible to outline all of the critiques levelled against the Copenhagen School. For an excellent overview of the so-called second-generation debates, see T. Balzacq, ed., Securitisation Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (London: Routledge, 2011); on the differences between the Copenhagen School and the Welsh School,
see R. Floyd, ‘Towards a Consequentialist Evaluation of Security: Bringing Together the Copenhagen and Welsh Schools of Security Studies’, Review of International Studies 33, no. 2 (2007): 327–350.
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Among others, see T. Barkawi and M. Laffey, ‘The Post-Colonial Moment in Security Studies’, Review of International Studies 32, no. 2 (2006): 329–352;
P. Biligin, ‘The “Western-Centrism” of Security Studies: “Blind Spot” or Constitutive Practice?’ Security Dialogue 41, no. 6 (2010): 615–622; ‘Thinking Past Western IR?’ Third World Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2008): 5–23;
D. Chandler, Empire in Denial: The Politics of State Building (London: Pluto Press, 2006);
V. Jabri, ‘Peacebuilding, the Local and the International: A Colonial or Post-Colonial Rationality?’ Peacebuilding 1, no. 1 (2013): 3–16.
Silencing is a very complex topic that cannot be fully addressed here. For an excellent overview, see G. K. Bhambra and R. Shilliam, Silencing Human Rights: Critical Engagements with a Contested Project (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009);
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See, among others, Tickner, ‘You Just Don’t Understand’, 611–632; C. Enloe, ‘“Gender” Is Not Enough: The Need for Feminist Consciousness’, International Affairs 80, no. 1 (2004): 95–97; Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2010);
D. Pankhurst, Gendered Peace: Women’s Struggles for Post-War Justice and Reconciliation (New York, London: Routledge, 2008);
C. Cockburn, ‘Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 12, no. 2 (2010): 139–157;
M. Zalewski, ‘Do We Understand Each Other Yet? Troubling Feminist Encounters with(in) International Relations’, The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 9, no. 2 (2007): 302–312.
G. C. Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 271–313.
On this point, see N. Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonisation and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
R. K. Ashley and R. B. J. Walker, ‘Introduction: Speaking the Language of Exile: Dissent Thought in International Studies’, International Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1990): 259–268.
For conceptions of the ‘local’ in peace studies, see O. P. Richmond, A Post-Liberal Peace (London and New York: Routledge, 2012);
R. Mac Ginty, ‘Indigenous Peace-Making versus the Liberal Peace’, Cooperation and Conflict 43, no. 2 (2008): 139–163. For an overview of ‘everyday’ security,
see J. Huysmans, ‘What’s in an Act? On Security Speech Acts and Little Security Nothings’, Security Dialogue 42, no. 4–5 (2011): 371–383;
X. Guillaume, ‘Resistance and the International: The Challenge of the Everyday’, International Political Sociology 5, no. 4 (2011): 459–462;
X. Guillaume and O. Kessler, ‘Everyday Practices of International Relations: People in Organisations’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 15, no. 1 (2012): 110–120.
O. P. Richmond, ‘De-Romanticising the Local, De-Mystifying the International: Hybridity in Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands’, The Pacific Review 24, no. 1 (2011): 115–136.
V. Bajc, ‘Introduction: Security Meta-Framing: A Cultural Logic of an Ordering Practice’, in Security and Everyday Life, V. Bajc and W. de Lint (New York and Oxon: Routledge, 2011), 1.
See E. Newman and O. P. Richmond, Challenges to Peace Building: Managing Spoilers during Conflict Resolution (New York: United Nations University Press, 2006).
On this point, it should be noted that many scholars have problematized the reliance on democratic and Western settings when it comes to the study of (de)securitization. See C. Wilkinson, ‘The Copenhagen School on Tour in Kyrgyzstan: Is Securitization Theory Useable outside Europe?’ Security Dialogue 38, no. 1 (2007): 5–25;
A. Collins, ‘Securitization, Frankenstein’s Monster and Malaysian Education’, The Pacific Review 18, no. 4 (2005): 567–588.
E. M. Cousens, ‘Introduction’, in Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies, E. M. Cousens and C. Kamur with K. Wermester (Boulder & London: Lynne Rienner, 2011).
R. Christie, ‘Critical Voices and Human Security: To Endure, To Engage or To Critique’, Security Dialogue 41, no. 2 (2010): 171. For an overview of the promises and limitations of human security,
see R. Paris, ‘Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?’ International Security 26, no. 2 (2001): 87–102.
See L. Amoore and M. de Goede, Risk and the War on Terror (London: Routledge, 2008);
C. Aradau and R. Van Munster, Politics of Catastrophe: Genealogies of the Unknown (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2011).
See A. Leander, ‘The Power to Construct International Security: On the Significance of Private Military Companies’, Millennium Journal of International Studies 33, no. 3 (2005): 803–826;
P. W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2003).
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Donnelly, F. (2016). Critical Security Studies and Alternative Dialogues for Peace: Reconstructing ‘Language Barriers’ and ‘Talking Points’. In: Richmond, O.P., Pogodda, S., Ramović, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Disciplinary and Regional Approaches to Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-40761-0_21
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