The insecurity of critique

Critical Studies on Security, 2016

This paper addresses the political and epistemological stakes of knowledge production in post-structuralist Critical Security Studies. It opens a research agenda in which struggles against dominant regimes of power/knowledge are entry-points for analysis. Despite attempts to gain distance from the word 'security', through interrogation of wider practices and schemes of knowledge in which security practices are embedded, post-structuralist CSS too quickly reads security logics as determinative of modern/liberal forms of power and rule. At play is an unacknowledged ontological investment in 'security', structured by disciplinary commitments and policy discourse putatively critiqued. Through previous ethnographic research, we highlight how struggles over dispossession and oppression call the very frame of security into question, exposing violences inadmissible within that frame. Through the lens of security, the violence of wider strategies of containing and normalizing politics are rendered invisible, or a neutral backdrop against which security practices take place. Building on recent debates on critical security methods, we set out an agenda where struggle provokes an alternative mode of onto-political investment in critical examination of power and order.

Critical Studies on Security, 2016

This paper addresses the political and epistemological stakes of knowledge production in post-structuralist Critical Security Studies. It opens a research agenda in which struggles against dominant regimes of power/knowledge are entry-points for analysis. Despite attempts to gain distance from the word 'security', through interrogation of wider practices and schemes of knowledge in which security practices are embedded, post-structuralist CSS too quickly reads security logics as determinative of modern/liberal forms of power and rule. At play is an unacknowledged ontological investment in 'security', structured by disciplinary commitments and policy discourse putatively critiqued. Through previous ethnographic research, we highlight how struggles over dispossession and oppression call the very frame of security into question, exposing violences inadmissible within that frame. Through the lens of security, the violence of wider strategies of containing and normalizing politics are rendered invisible, or a neutral backdrop against which security practices take place. Building on recent debates on critical security methods, we set out an agenda where struggle provokes an alternative mode of onto-political investment in critical examination of power and order.

It has become commonplace to accept that security is a ‘contested concept’. How contested, however, seems to be what is at stake for critical approaches to security. With the US Congress poised to ask for a National Intelligence Estimate on the security impacts of human-induced climate change; with terrorism, people movements and disease the focus of national security policy; and with various conceptualisations of human security informing national policy and new global norms, we are well into the ‘broadening and deepening’ phase once seen as revolutionary. At the same time, state-centric discourses of security remain very powerful, and global patterns of insecurity, violence and conflict are getting more destructive and uncontrollable. In this light, this paper surveys some of the key insights and approaches in the broad area of critical security studies, especially the securitisation theme of the Copenhagen School and the emancipatory agenda of the Welsh School. It assesses their value and their limitations, and puts forward an argument for the value of a deeper line of critique that puts security’s ontological claims into question. Without breaking with the ideal of emancipation, this is also to question security’s status as a end, and to reveal it as a form of power which may conceal other agendas and produce insecurity. This line of critique is of use not only for rethinking state responses to military threats, secessionism, terrorism and people movements; it has value for retaining critical perspective in a time of such apparent innovation.

Sociological Forum, 2013

Security as a phenomenon has come to occupy increasing social energy and thus merits sociological attention. But the question of how to go about studying “security” is somewhat vexing, because the concept of “security” is both highly polysemous (Ranasinghe 2013) and one that can potentially be located within a wide spectrum of social sites, ranging from the feelings of individuals to the practices of states. I suggest that we must first clarify what we are talking about when we talk about “security.” Here, I present several ideas for fully articulating the concept.

Security studies are an interdisciplinary field of scientific cooperation. It successfully combines studies and methods from the spheres of political, legal, technical and military sciences, as well as such in philosophy, psychology, sociology and economics, owing to the poly-semantic content of this notion; covering: basic human need, human rights and a key sphere of social system – itself functioning in a systemic framework. Also, it bears on state functions and basic characteristics of international relations and on organizational and personal development. Owing to the growing insecurity in the world today, under the conditions of globalization and growth of new threats and risks, research interest in security problems has gone into deeper details of late. As a result of this, the content of security has become enlarged; it could no longer be limited to military aspects or the maintenance of law and order. The very functions of national states have changed; they are now involved in rivalry relationships with a variety of subjects in activities keeping up national and international security. Keywords: polysemantic content, social system, security, law, order BOUZOV, V. (2010), On the Conception of Security (A Philosophical Approach) – in: Analele Universitatii din Oradea, Fascicula Sociologie-Asistenta Sociala-Filozofie [Annals of the University of Oradea, Installment Sociology-Social Work-Philosophy] N IX, pp.9-17;

Advances in Social, Humanities and Administrative Sciences - 1, 2023

In this article, which can be called a new link in a series of studies, a small picture of private security and its evaluation in terms of four different theories is presented. In general, the security phenomenon, which is addressed with an emphasis on the concept of private security, is expanded with constructivist, critical, postmodern and feminist readings. Thus, the study is not only limited to the views of these movements, but in a way, it turns into a brainstorming focused on private security. In the shaping of the article, the deductive method is predominantly employed. In this framework, general security-oriented determinations are tried to be reached by making use of the relevant literature. The thesis rising on this ground is that "private security or PMSCs...

papers.ssrn.com