1ISP7C3 Theories of International Security Academic Year 2015/16
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Recommended reference texts 6 itemsOf general interest, and especially useful for those with little background in International Security, will be the following texts
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Security studies: an introduction - 2013 (electronic resource)
Book
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Contemporary security studies - 2013019969477X,9780199694778
Book
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Understanding global security - 20130415688396,041568840X,041529665X,0415296668,9780415688390,9780415688406,9780415296656,9780415296663
Book
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International security: the contemporary agenda - 2014 (electronic resource)
Book
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The evolution of international security studies - , 20090521872618,0521694221,0511651791,9780521872614,9780521694223,9780511651793
Book
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International security - , 2007 (electronic resource)
Book
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Periodical references 20 items
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Journal
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Review of International Studies
Journal
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Journal
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Ethics & International Affairs
Journal
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Journal
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Journal
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Journal
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Journal
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Journal
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Journal
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Terrorism and Political Violence
Journal
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Security Dialogue -- Archive of Issues by Date
Journal Further
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International Relations -- Archive of Issues by Date
Journal Further
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Journal
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Journal of International Peacekeeping
Journal Further
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Studies in Conflict & Terrorism
Journal Further
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Seminar schedule and readings 122 items
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Week 1: Theories of International Security: past, present and future 11 itemsThe field of Security Studies, or International Security, has a long and rich tradition. If the Cold War translated into theories of international security mostly geared to concepts such as anarchy, polarity and deterrence, the end of the Cold War has signalled the beginning of a wave of ‘ambitious’ theorizing (according to Buzan & Waever). There are many theoretical angles into security today – some of these can considered complementary, some other have been accused of being exclusive and exclusionary.
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Key readings 2 items
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After the Return to Theory: The Past, Present and Future of Security Studies - , 0198708319,9780198708315
Chapter Essential
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From War to Security: Security Studies, the Wider Agenda and the Fate of the Study of War - 01/05/2011
Article Essential
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Supplementary readings 9 items
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Introduction and Chapter 1 'Defining International Security Studies' of The evolution of international security studies - , 0521872618,0521694221,0511651791,9780521872614,9780521694223,9780511651793
Chapter Further
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Chapter 1 'What is Security Studies?' of Contemporary security studies - 019969477X,9780199694778
Chapter Further
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Review Article - 06/2008
Article Further
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The Renaissance of Security Studies - 1991
Article Further
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Renaissance in Security Studies? Caveat Lector! - 1992
Article Further
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International Security Studies: A Report of a Conference on the State of the Field - 1988
Article Further
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Strategic Studies and Its Critics - 1968
Article Further
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Should Strategic Studies Survive? - 1997
Article Further
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Strategy as a vocation: Weber, Morgenthau and modern strategic studies - 2000/09/08
Article Further
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Week 2: National security between ambiguity and reification: sovereignty, security and the state 11 itemsThe paradigm of national security is possibly the most influential in the world of International Security understood as practice by policy-makers. Realists have often assumed the ‘national interest’ and national security to be the ‘guiding stars’ of security (Morgenthau). A critical re-reading of the history of these concepts, however, tells us that their place was never as established and unproblematic as realism claims. National security is not a straightforward category, but rather an ‘ambiguous symbol’.
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Key readings 2 items
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"National Security" as an Ambiguous Symbol - 1952
Article Essential
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From Social to National Security: On the Fabrication of Economic Order - 01/09/2006
Article Essential
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Supplementary readings 9 items
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Chapter ‘The Melian Dialogue’ of History of the Peloponnesian War - 0140440399
Chapter Further
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Man, the state, and war: a theoretical analysis - 20010231125372,9780231125376
Book Further
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The False Promise of International Institutions - 1995
Article Further
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Chapter 2 of The tragedy of great power politics - 0393349276,9780393349276
Chapter Further
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Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma - 1978
Article Further
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Security Studies and the `Security State': Security Provision in Historical Context - 01/06/2003
Article Further
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Chapter ‘Security and Self: Reflections of a Fallen Realist’ of Critical security studies: concepts and cases - 0816628564,0816628572,1857287339
Chapter Further
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Inequality and Theorizing in International Relations: The Case for Subaltern Realism - 2002
Article Further
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Week 3: Security as a Social Construction: the Securitization approach 11 itemsIn an attempt to uncover the ambiguous, contested and constructed nature of security, away from the monolithic certainties of Cold War realism, constructivism invented a new research agenda on the basis of the concept of ‘securitization’. Securitization tells us that security is not a fact, but a process. It invites us to consider how ideas float freely (Risse-Kappen) in security too, but also how specific actors have a specific ability to use these ideas and turn them into security issues. For the way it characterises the process of security, however, Securitization does not come without its problems and exclusions.
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Key readings 2 items
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Securitization and Desecuritization - c19950231102704,0231102712
Chapter Essential
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Supplementary readings 9 items
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Securitization and the Construction of Security - 01/12/2008
Article Further
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Esp. Chapter 1 and 2 of Security: a new framework for analysis - 155587603x,1555877842,155587603X
Chapter Further
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Constructing International Politics - 1995
Article Further
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Constructing International Politics - 1995
Article Further
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Chapter ‘Social Constructivism’ of The globalization of world politics: an introduction to international relations - 9780199656172
Chapter Further
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Chapter ‘What Makes the World Hang Together?’ of Constructing the world polity: essays on international institutionalization - 0415099900,0415099919
Chapter Further
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Chapter ‘The Constructivist Challenge to Structural Realism: A Review Essay’ of Constructivism and international relations: Alexander Wendt and his critics - 0415332710,0415411203,9780415332712,9780415411202
Chapter Further
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The European Union and the Securitization of Migration - 12/2000
Article Further
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Week 4: Identity, Culture and Civilisation: Cultural theories of (in)security 11 itemsIf ideas matter, when it comes to security, then ideas about ourselves and others must matter greatly. Constructivism opened the door to a wave of theorising which started from the assumption that identities have a fundamental role to play when it comes to defining security – including who we count as enemies or friends. This work was field-defining also in the sense that it signalled a clear rift within the constructivist camp – between ‘radical’ constructivists such as Campbell and Hansen, and ‘soft’ constructivists such as Wendt and Ruggie
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Key readings 2 items
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Identity and the Politics of Security - 01/06/1998
Article Essential
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Writing security: United States foreign policy and the politics of identity - 19980719055490
Book Essential pp.133-168
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Supplementary readings 9 items
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Taking Identity Seriously - 01/09/2000
Article Further
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The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict - 03/1993
Article
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The Intrastate Security Dilemma: Ethnic Conflict as a 'Tragedy'? - 1999
Article Further
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Constructing National Interests - 01/09/1996
Article Further
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Multiple Identities, Interfacing Games:: The Social Construction of Western Action in Bosnia - 01/12/1996
Article Further
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Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies - 1998
Article Further
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Week 5: Critical and emancipatory theories of security and the birth of Critical Security Studies (CSS) 11 itemsOnce the veil is lifted on realism’s caricatural view of security, the process of unpacking security really begins. Critical scholars of the Aberystwyth School, led by Ken Booth, go back to the fundamental questions regarding security and provide different answers. To paraphrase Graham Allison, they claim that where you stand on security often depends often on where you sit. Moreover, the aim of security is not survival but emancipation. In critical approaches, security is not only a social construction, but it is a deeply political one. In fact, security is such a politically charged field that even the concept itself, ‘security’, can betray political and ideological commitments. In order to reclaim freedom and justice, according to Neocleous, it may be therefore necessary to fight ‘security’ with anti-security.
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Key readings 2 items
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Security and emancipation - 10/1991
Article Essential
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Anti-Security: A Declaration' of Anti-Security - , c20111926958144,9781926958149
Chapter Essential
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Supplementary readings 9 items
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Chapter 7. 'Critical Theory' of Security studies: an introduction -
Chapter Essential
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Critical security studies and world politics - 20051555878261,1555878253
Book Further
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Theory of world security - 20070521835526,0521543177,9780521835527,9780521543170
Book Further
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Whose Security? State-Building and the ‘Emancipation’ of Women in Central Asia - 01/03/2004
Article Further
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Chapter 'Emancipation in the Critical Security Studies Project' of Critical security studies and world politics - 1555878261,1555878253
Chapter Further
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My Critique is Bigger than Yours: Constituting Exclusions in Critical Security Studies - 2009
Article Further
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‘We the Peoples’: Contending Discourses of Security in Human Rights Theory and Practice - , 01/03/2004
Article Further
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Getting savages to fight barbarians: development, security and the colonial present - 08/2005
Article Further
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The Intellectual Perils of Broad Human Security: Deepening the Critique of International Relations - 05/2008
Article Further
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Week 7: Security practices in a globalised world: sociological approaches to technologies, commodities, and power networks 12 itemsThe so-called Paris School of international security believes that theorising about security means first and foremost looking critically at how security really operates within the globalised international environment. Analysing the ‘really existing’ practices of security requires one to adopt a sociological and ethnographic approach to security – which the field has culpably eschewed for a long time. The reality of contemporary security, and any theories about it, must then start from the globalisation of insecurity, from the assemblages and networks of security ‘professionals’, and from the expanding remit of an increasingly privatised and securitized process of risk management.
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Key readings 2 items
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Article Essential
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Security Beyond the State: Global Security Assemblages in International Politics - , 03/2009
Article Essential
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Supplementary readings 10 items
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War Power, Police Power - 2014
Book Further
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The surveillant assemblage - 2000-12-1
Article Further
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Network Society, Network-centric Warfare and the State of Emergency - 01/08/2002
Article Further
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The Globalization of Informal Violence, Theories of World Politics, and the “Liberalism of Fear” - 2003/04/24
Article Further
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Securing the City: Private Security Companies and Non-State Authority in Global Governance - , 01/06/2007
Article Further
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Security: Collective Good or Commodity? - 01/09/2008
Article Further
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Week 8: From threat to risk, from security to resilience 14 itemsThe post-cold war security environment is one of extreme complexity. Flows and networks overlap to create processes without subjects, unintended consequences and intractable situations along a spectrum of areas and fields. According to the risk society approach, the security issues we are now faced with can no longer be called threats, but should rather be recognised as risks. Security has therefore become the realm of risk-management. And if we can never be totally certain of our security, the attitude that individuals and societies should cultivate is that of resilience. Resilience has thus become a new buzzword in international security, though its meaning and use is far from uncontested.
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Key readings 2 items
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Beyond Risk: Premediation and the Post-9/11 Security Imagination - 01/04/2008
Article
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Anticipating emergencies: Technologies of preparedness and the matter of security - , 01/04/2012
Article
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Supplementary readings 12 items
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Beyond neoliberalism: resilience, the new art of governing complexity - 02/01/2014
Article Further
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Governing insecurity: contingency planning, protection, resilience - , 05/2009
Article Further
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Risk and the war on terror - , 20080415443245,0415443237,0203927702,9780415443241,9780415443234,9780203927700
Book Further
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Resisting Resilience - 2013
Article Further
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Security, Technologies of Risk, and the Political: Guest Editors' Introduction - , , 01/04/2008
Article Further
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The Terrorist Threat: World Risk Society Revisited - 01/08/2002
Article Essential
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World risk society - 19990745622208,0745622216
Book Further
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Reflexive Security: NATO and International Risk Society - 01/06/2001
Article Further
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Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound: Everyday Life in Post-Interventionary Society - 12/2010
Article Further
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From defending borders towards managing geographical risks? Security in a globalised world - 06/2000
Article Further
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Week 9: Security as Life – Biopolitics and Affect 12 itemsThe move from the state to human beings as referents object of security has great emancipatory potential, as CSS has testified. However, there are at least two more ways of theorising security that start from life and yet expose the limits of human emancipation. The first is biopolitics, the governing of life and death through apparatuses of security. The second takes a corporeal/affective route into those practices of security implicated in the controlling of human beings as bodies. Both approaches have found ample application in the ‘exceptional’ (Agamben) spaces of the post-9/11 environment.
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Key readings 2 items
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"Just Out Looking for a Fight": American Affect and the Invasion of Iraq - 11/2003
Article Essential
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The Biopolitics of Security: Oil, Empire, and the Sports Utility Vehicle - 2005
Article Essential
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Supplementary readings 10 items
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Chapter 1 ‘The state of exception as a paradigm of government’of State of exception0226009246,0226009254,9780226009254
Chapter Further
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Guantanamo Bay and the Annihilation of the Exception - 01/09/2005
Article Further
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Beyond biopolitics: theory, violence and horror in world politics - , 20120415780594,9780415780599,9780415643665
Book Further
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War, Security and the Liberal State - 01/03/2006
Article Further
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The Biopolitics of Security: Oil, Empire, and the Sports Utility Vehicle - 2005
Article Further
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Sovereign Power and the Biopolitics of Human Security - , 01/10/2008
Article Further
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Affective atmospheres - 12/2009
Article Further
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Affective atmospheres - 12/2009
Article Further
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The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and Emotional Relationships - 2000
Article Further
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The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and around Social Movements - 1998
Article Further
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Week 10: Security and Discourse Analysis 10 itemsHow is security defined? Constructivists follow Wittgenstein in claiming that it is our words, both written and spoken, that make our worlds. Hence the importance of discourse and its analysis if we want to gain an insight into how security issues are performatively constructed into being.
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Key readings 2 items
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Chapter 4 of Writing the war on terrorism: language, politics and counter-terrorism - 0719071208,0719071216
Chapter Essential
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The study of discourse in international relations: A critique of research and methods - 1980070432248x
Article
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Supplementary readings 8 items
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Security metaphors: cold war discourse from containment to common house - c19960820421782
Book Further
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Qualitative methods in international relations: a pluralist guide - , 20090230241751,9780230241756
Book Further
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Writing security: United States foreign policy and the politics of identity - 19980719055490
Book Further
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Chapter ‘Textualizing Global Politics’ of International/intertextual relations: postmodern readings of world politics - 0669189561,0669189553
Chapter Further
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The Study of Discourse in International Relations:: A Critique of Research and Methods - 01/06/1999
Article Further
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Security as practice: discourse analysis and the Bosnian war - 2006
Book Further
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The politics of insecurity: fear, migration, and asylum in the EU - 20060415361249,0415361257
Book Further
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Week 11: Security and Visual Analysis 9 itemsIn a world in which visuality plays an increasing role – from the ubiquity of visual artefacts to the importance of the act of seeing for political and social participation – security becomes a visual, and not just a linguistic, practice. Boundaries of enmity and friendship are constructed visually. Issues can be securitized through images, videos and even through cartoons. At the same time, because they are polysemic and particularly open to interpretation (Barthes), images have a specific transformative and disruptive potential. This exists in tension with the drive towards manipulation, exercised by both governments and private actors. In more than one sense, security is a visual battlefield.
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Key readings 2 items
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Theorizing the image for Security Studies: Visual securitization and the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis - 01/03/2011
Article Essential
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Supplementary readings 7 items
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Cultural governance and pictorial resistance: reflections on the imaging of war - 12/2003
Article Further
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Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics - 2003
Article Further
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Geopolitics and visuality: Sighting the Darfur conflict - 2007-5
Article Further
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The politics of securitization and the Muhammad cartoon crisis: A post-structuralist perspective - 01/08/2011
Article Further
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Chapter ‘Visual Analysis’ of Critical security studies: an introduction - , 0415841836,0415841844,9780415841832,9780415841849
Chapter Further
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Securitizing images: The female body and the war in Afghanistan - , 01/12/2013
Article Further
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Captured by the camera's eye: Guantánamo and the shifting frame of the Global War on Terror - 10/2011
Article Further
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Week 12: The Material Turn in Security Studies 10 itemsComplex times call for complex theories. Material approaches aim to give us a pair of fresh eyes to look at and theorise about security. These approaches reject the assumption of anthropocentrism, share a certain dissatisfaction with the ‘social constructionist’ paradigm, and refuse to privilege language and the symbolic over the material and inert. The result is an object-analysis of security. Realism comes back in fashion – but it’s a ‘new’ realism, that rejects all a-priori distinctions between subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, ideas and matter and privileges a ‘flat ontology’ in which all these elements interact to produce security complexity.
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Key readings 2 items
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Supplementary readings 8 items
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Hollow land: Israel's architecture of occupation - 20071844671259,9781844671250
Book Further
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Undoing War: War Ontologies and the Materiality of Drone Warfare - 01/06/2013
Article Further
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Terrorist assemblages: homonationalism in queer times - 20070822340941,082234114X,9780822340942,9780822341147
Book Further
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Construction Site: Architecture and Politics in Israel/Palestine - 01/01/2005
Article Further
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The Agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout - 01/10/2005
Article Further
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The Study of Drones as Objects of Security: Targetted Killing as Military Strategy0415535395,0415535409,020310711X,9780415535397,9780415535403,9780203107119
Chapter Further
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Out of the mountains: the coming age of the urban guerrilla - 20151849045119,9781849045117
Book Further
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