Securitization Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve

by Thierry Balzacq (Editor)

This volume aims to provide a new framework for the analysis of securitization processes, increasing our understanding of how security issues emerge, evolve and dissolve. Securitisation theory has become one of the key components of security studies and IR courses in recent years, and this book represents the first attempt to provide an integrated and rigorous overview of securitization practices within a coherent framework. To do so, it organizes securitization around three core assumptions which make the theory applicable to empirical the centrality of audience, the co-dependency of agency and context and the structuring force of the dispositif. These assumptions are then investigated through discourse analysis, process-tracing, ethnographic research, and content analysis and discussed in relation to extensive case studies.This innovative new book will be of much interest to students of securitisation and critical security studies, as well as IR theory and sociology.Thierry Balzacq is holder of the Tocqueville Chair on Security Policies and Professor at the University of Namur. He is Research Director at the University of Louvain and Associate Researcher at the Centre for European Studies at Sciences Po Paris.

Genres: Political Science

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 9, 2010

Reviews

[Maha Abdallah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting read! Great to gain insight into the concept of 'audience' within the securitisation process. Provides an elaborate extension of the Copenhagen School account of securitisation.

[Patrik Persson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book adds a lot to the Buzan et al book on Securitization, recommend reading that first

[Engy Moussa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beyond useful and enlightening to anyone interested in understanding securitization theory.
More importantly, this book opens one's eyes on new windows to reflect in retrospective on past events, contemplate the moment in mid-turmoil and foresee the continuously constructed reality, all of which are rarely presented in the media or elsewhere as how they genuinely are, if such thing as genuine can exist anymore.
However, this book is inseparable and a fundamental complementary to the original and first book on securitization theory of the Copenhagen School - Security: a new framework of analysis.
I was truly blessed to have been guided to read these books; I dearly pray that I shall benefit from their insightful contribution to the academic field and myself; and I highly recommend them to all people interested to challenge their old way of thinking and take a new look at what we call reality!