scholarly journals African experiences and alternativity in International Relations theorizing about security

2022 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83
Author(s):  
Kwaku Danso ◽  
Kwesi Aning
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Knowledge Generation ◽  
Conflict Prevention ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Effective Site ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Deconstructing International Relations (IR) episteme acknowledges its generation of power imbalances in security knowledge that relegate African experiences to the margins of global politics. Central to this process of relegation is a pervasive ‘methodological whiteness’, which, while eliding coloniality and racism, projects white experience as a universal perspective. Accompanying this Eurocentric bias has been the intrusive projection of the Weberian state as the most effective site for security governance and conflict prevention on a continent with states that are characterized by a hybridity of political orders, which deviate substantially from the ideal-type state that they seek to mimic. Not only has this resulted in disastrous policies in many parts of Africa, but critical questions arise as to the relevance of conventional IR and security studies as neutral sites for dispassionate knowledge production and policy-making on African security, thereby necessitating alternative perspectives. This article reflects on the ways in which IR and security studies have been responsible, in part, for the production of a racialized mode of security knowledge generation that obfuscates the security policies and experiences of people in African locales. It draws on insights from post-colonial discourses and the episteme of alternativity to explore how the study of events and processes in Africa in a theoretically conscious manner could advance IR scholarship as a whole. It contends that incorporating African experiences as they manifest through hybrid security orders can broaden the empirical base for IR theorizing about security since they offer another perspective outside the conventional western assumptions and experiences.

scholarly journals Governing (in)security in a postcolonial world: Transnational entanglements and the worldliness of ‘local’ practice

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 383-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Hönke ◽  
Markus-Michael Müller
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Local Practice ◽  
Methodological Perspective ◽  
Western Perspective

While analysis of transnationalized forms of security governance in the contemporary postcolonial world features prominently in current debates within the field of security studies, most efforts to analyse and understand the relevant processes proceed from an unquestioned ‘Western’ perspective, thereby failing to consider the methodological and theoretical implications of governing (in)security under postcolonial conditions. This article seeks to address that lacuna by highlighting the entangled histories of (in)security governance in the (post)colonial world and by providing fresh theoretical and methodological perspective for a security studies research agenda sensitive to the implications of the postcolonial condition.

Continuing the Conversation … Some Reflections

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 747-751
Author(s):  
Juanita Elias
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
The Relationship

The diverse collection of short reflections included in this Critical Perspectives section looks to continue a conversation—a conversation that played out in the pages of this journal (Elias 2015) regarding the relationship between two strands of feminist international relations scholarship: feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist international political economy (IPE). In this forum, the contributors return to some of the same ground, but in doing so, they bring in new concerns and agendas. New empirical sites of thinking through the nexus between security and political economy from a feminist perspective are explored: war, women's lives in postconflict societies, and international security governance institutions and practices.

scholarly journals The Women, Peace and Security Agenda: The Unfinished Story of Feminist Revolution versus Compromise in Global Politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 47-65
Author(s):  
Míla O'Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Security Council Resolution ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
The United Nations

The adoption of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security (WPS) in 2000 has prompted the development of an extensive WPS scholarship within the field of feminist International Relations. The dynamic scholarly debate is characterised by certain tensions between two feminist groups – the radical revolutionary one which advocates a redefinition of the global order and is more sceptical of the agenda, and the pragmatist one accentuating the compromise towards the existing peace and security governance. This article explores the two main subjects of the WPS research – the discourse and implementation, as they have been informed by the revolutionary and pragmatist approaches. The article shows that while the academic inquiries into the WPS discourse reveal disappointment with the compromises made regarding the revolutionary vision, this disappointment is also present in the literature on implementation. The latter literature nonetheless acknowledges feminist pragmatism as a way forward given the realities on the ground.

Beyond the “Helpless Nepali Woman” versus the “Fierce Maoist Fighter”: Challenging the Artificial Security/Economy Divide

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 733-739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahel Kunz
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Holistic Analysis ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Nepali Women

Recent discussions over similarities and differences between feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist global political economy (FGPE) approaches invite us to reflect on the underlying assumptions about knowledge production within feminist international relations (IR) more broadly (Allison 2015; Enloe 2015; see also the introduction to this forum). I use Nepali women ex-combatants’ life stories to make two specific points relating to these discussions. First, I illustrate how the separation of security and political economy issues cannot fully account for their life experiences. Second, and by way of overcoming this separation, I show how by beginning with life stories, we can develop a holistic analysis that challenges the broader Eurocentric politics of feminist IR knowledge production.

Is Strategic Studies Rationalist, Materialist, and A-Critical? Reconnecting Security and Strategy

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 494-510
Author(s):  
Pascal Vennesson
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
International Security ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Thomas Schelling ◽  
Strategic Studies

AbstractBetween the 1940s and the 1960s, strategy was at the heart of security studies and closely intertwined with International Relations (IR). Over the past three decades, however, the study of strategy has been relegated to a secondary position in the international security subfield and marginalized in IR theorizing. One important source of this disconnect is the challenge mounted by critical security advocates, who sought to reorient the study of security away from strategic studies. They reached into the philosophy of science and pulled out three familiar dichotomies, rationalism/constructivism, materialism/idealism, and problem-solving/critical theorizing, that they could utilize within security debates. Specifically, they argue that strategic studies leaves out too much of what is really important for security and world politics because it is rationalist, materialist, and retains an uncritical view of knowledge production. In this article, I turn the critical security conventional wisdom on its head and show that strategic studies, exemplified by the ideas of Carl von Clausewitz and Thomas Schelling, actually transcends these dichotomies and hence offers an indispensable source of insights for both security studies and IR.

The Global Politics of Medicine: Beyond global health, against securitisation theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 961-987 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALISON HOWELL
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Global Health ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Psychological Resilience ◽  
Politics Of Medicine

AbstractThis article makes the case for a new field in International Relations (IR): the Global Politics of Medicine. It argues that significant avenues of research can be opened up by focusing on medicine and the life sciences, in order to both challenge current IR theories, and develop new theoretical and empirical insights in IR. In particular, the article challenges the validity of securitisation theory, and specifically the argument that health has been securitised. Showing instead that medicine and warfare have been imbricated from the nineteenth century as strategies of population, it challenges securitisation theory's ahistoricism and its assumption that social security and international security (and the norm/exception) are analytically divisible. Bringing this into the present through the examples of triage, psychological resilience, and genetic intelligence in counterinsurgency, it traces how warfare and medicine now ambitiously seek to treat populations as sets of individual bodies. Arguing that we cannot retreat to some mythical state of politics ‘prior’ to securitisation, it draws out how the fields of war, health, and medicine are nonetheless highly contested. The article concludes by challenging the fields of Global Health, war, and security studies, but also suggests novel routes for pursuing the study of the Global Politics of Medicine.

scholarly journals Transgressing to teach: Theorising race and security through struggle

Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572110606
Author(s):  
Chris Rossdale
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Black Panther Party ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
The Us ◽  
Self Defence

Recent interventions in critical security studies have argued that the field has struggled to account for the racialised/racist foundations of security politics. This article engages with the US Black Panther Party (BPP), arguing that the Party did important work to show how security politics is dependent on racial violence. The idea that we can theorise global politics through struggle (`struggle as method’) is becoming popular within disciplinary International Relations (IR), but has longer lineages in Black radical thought. The BPP were important advocates of struggle as method, with tactics and strategies intentionally designed with a pedagogical purpose; through Panther actions (including community self-defence and survival programmes), and the state’s response to these, the mechanisms of capitalist white supremacy were laid bare. The article therefore acknowledges BPP action as a series of theoretical interventions, which demonstrated how the terms of US/white security are rooted in and dependent on anti-Blackness. It also shows how Panther tactics prefigured alternative, radical, anti-statist approaches to security, these conceptualised as `survival pending revolution’. The article closes by arguing that scholarship on critical security studies - especially as related to the racialised politics of security - should do more to work with and acknowledge its indebtedness to struggle as method.

The Politics of Regime Mainstreaming: Knowledge Production and the Institutionalization of Islamic Finance

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 606-628
Author(s):  
Nukhet A. Sandal
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Islamic Finance ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Norm Diffusion ◽  
Economic Framework ◽  
World Markets ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
And Diffusion

AbstractIslamic finance has been surprisingly undertheorized in the international relations literature. In this paper, I fill this gap by investigating the dynamics of mainstreaming within the Islamic finance regime in global markets. Using the norm diffusion literature, I argue that the development and diffusion of Islamic economics, and the corresponding expertise, have followed three distinct steps. First, Islamic economics initially was a critique of capitalism and world markets; second, it was “nationalized” by the political leaders of major Muslim-majority countries; and third, it became an integral part of world markets. By tracing the development of Islamic finance as part of global politics, I situate it within a theoretical framework and show the wider implications of this economic framework for global politics.

scholarly journals Maritime security: the uncharted politics of the global sea

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (5) ◽  
pp. 971-978
Author(s):  
Christian Bueger ◽  
Timothy Edmunds ◽  
Barry J. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Maritime Security ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
National Significance ◽  
National Environmental ◽  
Maritime Environment

Abstract In this introduction to a special section of the September 2019 issue of International Affairs, we revisit the main themes and arguments of our article ‘Beyond seablindness: a new agenda for maritime security studies’, published in this journal in November 2017. We reiterate our call for more scholarly attention to be paid to the maritime environment in international relations and security studies. We argue that the contemporary maritime security agenda should be understood as an interlinked set of challenges of growing global, regional and national significance, and comprising issues of national, environmental, economic and human security. We suggest that maritime security is characterized by four main characteristics, including its interconnected nature, its transnationality, its liminality—in the sense of implicating both land and sea—and its national and institutional cross-jurisdictionality. Each of the five articles in the special section explores aspects of the contemporary maritime security agenda, including themes of geopolitics, international law, interconnectivity, maritime security governance and the changing spatial order at sea.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zürn
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Political System ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Causal Mechanisms

This chapter summarizes the argument of the book. It recapitulates the global governance as a political system founded on normative principles and reflexive authorities in order to identify the legitimation problems built into it; it points to the explanation of the rise of societal politicization and counter-institutionalization via causal mechanisms highlighting the endogenous dynamics of that global governance system; and, it sums up the conditions under which the subsequent processes of legitimation and delegitimation lead to the system’s decline or to a deepening of it. In addition, the conclusion submits that the arguments put forward in this book are in line with a newly emerging paradigm in International Relations. A “global politics paradigm” is increasingly complementing the “cooperation under anarchy paradigm” which has been dominant for around five decades. The chapter finishes with suggestions of areas for further research.

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