Chapter Summaries
Chapter 1: Introduction
This is a book about methodology. There is a difference between theory and methodology, and there is a difference between methods and methodology. Theories, as I discuss in more detail in my introductory chapter, can be seen as packages of ideas about how the world works. Some are considered persuasive and become dominant for one reason or another; some are contested and ultimately marginalised, again for any number of reasons. All theories are, however, packages of ideas. Methods, on the other hand, are devices that we can use in the research process to collect and analyse data (or ‘stuff’, which is the highly technical term I tend to use with my own students). We can gather data (in a number of ways, as the chapters that follow demonstrate) and we can then analyse this data using a range of techniques (again, as shown in the following chapters). Strategies within both of these phases of research are known broadly as ‘research methods’, and all methods construct knowledge about the world (through the collection and analysis of ‘stuff’) in different ways. What is often not discussed, in the social sciences at least, is the politics of different methods, but this book aims to engage this question directly. Although the book is divided into ‘Theories’ and ‘Methods’, this book is also engaged in discussions of methodology throughout, as all of the contributing authors reflect on how the ideas that they have about the world that we live in, alongside the ideas that they have about how and why and when they can or should collect and analyse data about that world, create the knowledge claims that they are then able to make.
In the first section of my introductory chapter, I provide an overview of the conventional account of security according to the discipline of International Relations (IR). This theoretical account provides a clear indication of what should – and what should not – be ascribed the status of a ‘security issue’, although in contemporary security studies, a ‘sub-discipline’ of IR, scholars and policy-makers recognise a plethora of threats not only to the survival of the sovereign state but also to the survival of the human subject. As conventional theories of security have been unable (and, at times, unwilling) to engage effectively with these ‘new’ security threats, we have seen the proliferation of theories of security aimed at providing a firm theoretical platform from which to address non-traditional security issues. These are the theories we discuss in this book, theories – or ‘approaches’ – that we might term ‘critical’. In the second section of the introduction, therefore, I discuss the content of the book in more detail, in an effort to explain in the third and final section how and why both theory and method (methodologies) have a profound influence on how we (think we) know what we (think we) know about security in contemporary global politics.
Chapter 2: Feminist security studies
This chapter uses the case study of rape in war to explore the ways in which gender matters to contemporary critical approaches to security. After providing an overview of the theories of gender that might support feminist security studies research, I outline the case study and discuss the issue of rape in war through the lenses of different feminist theories. I conclude by commenting briefly on the limitations of employing a feminist security studies approach.
Chapter 3: Human security
Human security has emerged as a theoretical perspective and an operational framework for solving foreign policy problems in the post-Cold War Era. Under this approach security policy and analysis are refocused on individuals as primary referents and benefactors. Using human trafficking as an illustrative case, this chapter examines the merits and limits of this approach. Firstly, the chapter outlines how human security attempts to simultaneously broaden and deepen traditional conceptions of insecurity. As such, this section highlights how the human security approach contributes to the broader transformative agenda of critical security studies. The second section explores various criticisms of the critical capacity of human security, particularly as a problem-solving tool now frequently adopted by states and state-based institutions. The final section of the chapter explores how the human security approach might serve as a bridge between critical theory and practical policy-making in ways that reflect genuine alternatives to the traditional security paradigm.
Chapter 4: Green security
This chapter explores the implications of considering environmental degradation as a security threat through highlighting the ways in which security can be defined when related to the environment. First, the chapter maps out the rationale for narrating environmental degradation as a security issue. Second, the chapter looks at the relationship between environmental concerns and security when we consider environmental degradation as a catalyst for conflict and violence both between and within states. Third, the chapter looks at how wider definitions of security (e.g. human security) may be more useful when we consider environmental problems. Finally the chapter outlines some of the critiques of securitising the environment.
Chapter 5: Securitisation theory
This chapter analyzes the contributions of securitization theory as a critical approach to security. It uses the Unocal affair as a case study, looking at securitization of energy by elite US actors to show how securitization theory can be used to illustrate threat constructions and to interrogate and question these processes. The case study illustrates securitization in practice, highlighting both the contributions of the theory to critical security approaches more broadly conceived and its limitations.
Chapter 6: Security as emancipation
The chapter provides a conceptual introduction to the notion of security as emancipation (SAE), originally identified as the ‘Welsh School’ of Critical Security Studies (CSS). The three key tenets that characterize this approach are: recognition of individuals as ultimate referents of security; emphasis on the political underpinnings and implications of security praxis; and a normative commitment towards emancipatory transformations. Employing the case of the 1984 industrial accident in the Indian city of Bhopal, the chapter demonstrates how SAE is useful to understand and act politically upon a specific security issue. The chapter also reflects upon the significance of SAE in CSS, whilst recognizing its methodological implications and some of its limitations.
Chapter 7: Poststructural security studies
This chapter outlines the contribution of poststructuralism to security studies in three ways. It shows, firstly, how security is enabled by particular kinds of language and signification that in turn structure and shape lived realities; secondly, how security functions through particular strategies and modalities of state and social power; and thirdly, how claims about security underpin larger systems of identity and existence that structure relations between communities in antagonistic and problematic ways. It concludes by suggesting how poststructualism offers ethical resources to help reshape security politics and practice.
Chapter 8: Postcolonial security studies
Organized around ‘great power politics’, the field of security politics has been largely blind to the ways that ‘small’ and/or ‘weak’ states have conceptualized their own security needs and interests. Many critics of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, for instance, have pointed out that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) institutionalizes and legitimizes the possession of nuclear weapons by a small group of powerful states – the ‘permanent five’ (P5) members of the United Nations Security Council) – while prohibiting other states from pursuing nuclear security. Approaching the question of security from the perspective of those states that see themselves as marginalized by an unequal global security architecture (India, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea), this chapter will explore how a postcolonial approach to the study of security complicates contemporary approaches to nuclear non-proliferation and global disarmament.
Chapter 9: Quantitative methods
This chapter uses U.S.-led economic sanctions on Iran to demonstrate the utility of employing quantitative methods in critical, emancipatory analysis in Security Studies. It critiques the purely positivist application of quantitative tools that dominates the field, and suggests that quantitative (particularly mathematical) methods can serve critical ends. By way of an example, it uses game theory to demonstrate that a state’s sense of self (or ‘ontological security’) can incentivise the use of harmful sanctions against their own material interest (and against the interests of others). It then suggests other mathematical methods that would be useful in a critical analysis of the sanctions regime on Iran.
Chapter 10: Archival research and document analysis
This chapter examines the use of archival research and document analysis in critical security studies. These research methods are usually associated with the discipline of history but they have also been an important set of tools for critical social scientists. As a case study we will examine an event that took place approximately a century ago, the World War I internment of Ukrainians from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who made their home in Canada prior to 1914. In particular, the chapter includes discussions of how to analyse primary sources, the relationship between archive research and historical narrative, the proper development of deductive and inductive modes of reasoning, and their use in the creation of inferences about the past.
Chapter 11: Ethnographic methods
This chapter explores the process of generating the 'thick description' that is the product of interpretive ethnographic research. The chapter begins with an overview of the history of ethnographic methods and their current place within International Relations and Security Studies, before going on to outline the key characteristics of a critical interpretive ethnographic methodology. In the following section a three-stage model of the research process is presented and illustrated with examples taken from the author's fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan in 2005-2006 on understandings of security. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the limitations of ethnographic methods.
Chapter 12: Participatory action research
We write as scholar-practitioners, but more importantly as people interested in and concerned about the experiences of other people. Our roles, which may be understood in conventional terminology as volunteers, activists, and academics, have blended in our lives and given us opportunities to gain insights through unique collaborations with people from outside more traditional academic settings. The insights afforded have been earned through trust and cooperation, then reconnection and more cooperation. When this process occurs systematically it is frequently called participatory action research (PAR). In this essay we trace the development of PAR in the social sciences and share our research stories to illustrate the application of community guidance to developing ethical research techniques in security studies.
Chapter 13: Elite interviews
This chapter shows how elite interviewing can provide insights that cannot be gleaned from documentary analysis alone. It draws on the author’s own experience of interviewing dozens of US Department of Defense officials, as well as individuals from high profile human rights organisations, about the impact that US training of Latin American military forces had on human rights during the Cold War and afterwards. The training, much of which took place at the School of Americas (SOA), now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), gained notoriety in the 1990s, when training manuals were leaked that showed the US had advocated methods tantamount to torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The chapter introduces readers to some of the challenges of elite interviewing, it discusses some of the thorny ethical questions that need to be considered, and it provides guidance on conducting interviews.
Chapter 14: Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software
This chapter provides an introduction to computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) and its applications in critical security studies. After providing an overview of CAQDAS and its benefits and problems, the chapter provides a general description of some basic CAQDAS techniques. Once these general functionalities are identified, the chapter moves on to a concrete example of how the ‘Freedom Agenda Collection’ was constructed and analysed as part of a larger qualitative research project. The chapter orientates the reader using generalities and insights into what is possible before demonstrating the utility of CAQDAS by outlining practical techniques of analysis.
Chapter 15: Network analysis
Social thinkers today are taking important steps from conceiving the social world in terms of substances and ‘things’ toward conceiving it in terms of processes and unfolding relations. Network approaches are at the core of this movement toward relational thinking. The chapter discusses social network analysis as more than a mere ‘method’, and argues that it belongs to a family of analytical strategies for the study of how resources, goods, events, or positions flow through a particular configuration of social ties. We show how the critical potential of network analysis grows from: (1) (re)materialisations; (2) interstitial thinking; (3) thinking across scales and strata of reality. In International Relations, the potential of network thinking rests in its creative disturbance of state-centric visions.
Chapter 16: Predication, presupposition and subject-positioning
This chapter demonstrates how the analytical concepts of predication, presupposition and subject-positioning may be employed to analyze visual and textual representations; that is, to conduct discourse analysis in practice. As shown by Doty (1993), predication, presupposition and subject-positioning are heuristically useful categories for understanding how subjects, objects and modes of conduct are discursively constituted. In this sense, the concepts are textual mechanisms by which certain subjects are ascribed or denied agency and, thereby, enable or disable certain practices. In order to illustrate how the methodological concepts may be put to use, we analyze the discourse on ‘security versus legality’ during the ‘war on terror’ and we use the television series 24 as a set of representations of such a discourse.
Chapter 17: Deconstruction as ‘anti-Method’
This chapter outlines a deconstructive approach to global politics, using the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) to illustrate how this approach might be used to generate new knowledge and ideas about security. An article produced for Foreign Policy magazine in 2009 (entitled ‘The Death of Macho’) is deconstructed to show how ideas about economic security, progress and future prosperity can be, and are being, subject to contestation.
Chapter 18: Visual analysis and the aesthetics of security
This chapter seeks to examine visual security. In particular the chapter offers a preliminary introduction to aesthetic readings of the visual. It does so, first by establishing the roots of interpretive analysis within IR theory touching on the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, before using a range of examples to demonstrate the interface between qualitative theories and contemporary methodologies. The final part of the chapter explores the limitations of ‘aesthetically-informed’ accounts of IR, while also demonstrating more generally, how interpretive methods can be brought to bear on visual accounts of security.
Chapter 19: Conclusion: The process, practice and ethics of research
This chapter argues that research on security comes from somewhere, is produced by someone, and has potentially significant impacts on others. It begins by tracing the contexts of research, highlighting issues of project design, academic convention, and political interests. To illustrate the significance of these, a case study on contemporary terrorism research is provided. A second section explores different understandings of the security researcher, contrasting images of this role as a scientist, narrator and critic. The chapter concludes by investigating significant ethical issues that emerge in the conduct and presentation of research.