Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases

Critical Security Studies was first published in 1997. Many of the most interesting issues in post-Cold War international relations can be usefully examined through a prism labeled “security studies.” These issues include challenges to the state from “below” by ethnic and regional fragmentations, and from “above” by global economic, cultural, and environmental dynamics. This new volume brings together a diverse group of analysts seeking to explore these issues and contribute to the development of a self-consciously critical perspective within security studies. The contributors to this volume offer a range of essays that share the goal of establishing the grounds for a broad and reflective dialogue about the nature of security and the practice of security. Chapters address such topics as security-building in postapartheid South Africa, the discourse of security in post-Cold War Europe, the construction of the problem of weapons proliferation, and the role of multilateral institutions in peace and security operations.Operating on both conceptual and practical levels, Critical Security Studies directly engages substantive issues and questions of contemporary security studies in order to contribute to a theoretical reevaluation and practical reorientation of the field.

Contributors: Amitav Acharya, York U, Toronto; Mohammed Ayoob, Michigan State U; Ken Booth, U of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK; Beverly Crawford, U of California, Berkeley; Simon Dalby, Carleton U, Ottawa; Karin M. Fierke, Nuffield College, Oxford U, UK; Bradley S. Klein, Clark U; Ronnie D. Lipschutz, U of California, Santa Cruz; David Mutimer, Keele U, UK; Thomas Risse-Kappen, U of Konstanz, Germany; Peter Vale, U of the Western Cape, South Africa; R. B. J. Walker, U of Victoria, British Columbia. Keith Krause is associate professor of political science at York University in Toronto. Michael C. Williams is a professor of international politics at Aberystwyth University, Wales.Copublished with the University College London Press