Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases

by Keith Krause, Michael C. Williams

This text takes issue with arguments that security studies is a discipline of limited use in making sense of the post-Cold War world. It argues that many of the most interesting theoretical issues in international relations can most usefully be

Genres: International Relations, Nonfiction, Politics

404 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1997

Reviews

[Mayim de Vries · Rating 1 out of 5]

The authors want to challenge the argument that the appropriate referent for thinking about security is identity and its connections to community and culture. However, it is unclear if it is a referent point or an object that is the stress on culture, civilization, and identity; the role of ideas, norms, and values in the constitution of that which is to be secured; and the historical context within which this process takes place or the culture, civilization, and identity THAT IS TO BE SECURED in their ideas, norms, and values (as if they are something different than the culture, civilization and identity).

Internally disjointed and inconsistent.

[Lukáš · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of course, an essential collection, when it comes to the debates on the discipline and directions of post-Cold War (yet not exclusively so, since the debate on relocating its focus has been present probably since the mid-1980s) security studies. The unifying line of the book is to offer space for authors with different backgrounds to open their own perspectives for the ways how the use and study of security may be challenged, expanded and directed. An important and extremely-well crafted piece worth the time and engagement.