Critical Approaches to Security Studies Theories and Methods

Shepherd, Laura J.

Abstract

London: Routledge, 2013. Pp. 281.
Laura J. Shepherd is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She is author/editor of four books. The book edited by Laura J. Shepherd consists of two parts i.e. first part deals with Theories: (how we see the world) and the second part deals with Methods: (collecting and analyzing data), in the second part the authors discuss a range of techniques for the collection and analysis of data (although these sometimes overlap). Scholars argue that quantitative methods of data collection and analysis are not necessarily prohibited for those pursuing critical projects in Security Studies, and use the case of economic sanctions against Iran analyzed through game theoretical modeling to show how quantitative techniques can achieve critical outcomes.
Theories of gender are broadly falling into three categories: essentialist, constructivist, and post- structuralism. These different theories offer different explanations of the relationship between body and behavior. Essentialist theories of gender suggest that you are born into your body and your body is then designated a sex identity on the basis of its physical characteristics: you are either female or male. This theory describes, sex category determines significant aspects of social behavior. These behaviors – and many others, including one’s propensity for militarism, capacity for leadership and skills at peace- building, all of which are implicated in the study of security – are seen to inhere in the bodies of the individuals.
Constructivist theories of gender provide us with a further component of vocabulary to use in the discussion of FSS: the concepts of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’. Traditionally, the descriptors ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ have referred to behaviors rather than bodies and, further, have captured the way in which behavior is influenced by gender.
The author has chosen for illustrating the insights of FSS is rape in war: the perpetration of sexual violence during periods of armed conflict. Rape in war is multidimensional and its perpetration, prevention and punishment raise a complex set of issues. The United Nations has recently begun to make a concerted effort to streamline its policy responses in this arena, subsequent to rape in war being formally recognized as an issue critical to international peace and security by the United Nations Security Council, with the passing of UNSC Resolution 1820 (2008). The first operative paragraph of this resolution: Stresses that sexual violence, when used or commissioned as a tactic of war in order to deliberately target civilians or as a part of a widespread or systematic attack against civilian populations, can significantly exacerbate situations of armed conflict and may impede the restoration of international peace and security. Issue of rape in war and analyses it from three different theoretical positions that broadly map on to the three theories of gender outlined above. The framers envision rape in war as: first, ‘violence against women’; second, ‘gender violence’; and third, ‘the violent reproduction of gender’.
In the wake of the end of the Cold War and the proliferation of ethnic conflict, intra- state violence, humanitarian disaster and gross human rights violations, traditional approaches to security have become increasingly inadequate for defining and addressing the many forms of insecurity that most people in the world face on daily basis. In the 1990s, consensus began to emerge in both policy and academic circles around the need to focus on the individual as the subject of security, challenging the state’s claim to primacy as the referent object.
In international relations, due to power imbalances and the different aims and objectives of different states, it is very difficult to encourage collective action at the international level. Unfortunately, however, environmental degradation including climate change is regarded as a problem which is considered to require collective action due to the fact that environmental issues transcend borders and potentially affect everybody. This is known as a collective action problem.
Constructing the environment and environmental degradation as a security issue implies too many, including scholars and international and national policy- makers, that response to these problems should be dealt with by the military or other security organizations. Securitization refers to the process through which an issue is labeled a ‘security’ issue by an (elite) actor, a process which moves the issue out of the normal political sphere and into the security sphere. Labeling something a ‘security’ issue affects policy, and as such ‘security’ is a ‘speech act’.
There are three key facilitating conditions that make successful securitization more likely: the speech act itself following the ‘grammar of security’ emphasizing priority, urgency and survival; the securitizing actor being in a ‘position of authority’ to maximize audience acceptance; and the features of the alleged threat. Securitization theory distinguishes security and securitization against regular politics and politicization, and presents a scale for identifying the status of issues, ranging from non- politicized to securitized.
The scholars use US-led economic sanctions on Iran to demonstrate the utility of employing quantitative methods in critical, emancipatory analysis in Security Studies. Critical approaches to security are often assumed to have an affinity with ‘qualitative’ methods. This is an epistemological claim as it relates to the question of how we (think we) know what we (think we) know. As scholars and teachers of security, then, we often perpetuate the understanding that the ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’ divide maps onto the epistemological divide between ‘scientific’ researches and ‘post- positivist’ research in Security Studies.
Game theory involves using mathematical models of conflict and cooperation to explore decision- making. It can be used in the study of security to examine the circumstances under which actors will behave in particular ways, by attributing values to various outcomes derived from previously attributed probabilities of various decisions. A game- theoretic model of the incentive structure for instituting sanctions policy that takes account of the potential influence of the ontological security of the sender serves as an initial probe for the argument that sanctioning actors are actually looking to express and reinforce their senses of self in implementing sanctions regimes.
This use of quantitative methods to investigate the argument that actors’ sense of self is influential in their security decision- making is not, alone, sufficient to explore the specific question of the costs and benefits of the sanctions regime on Iran or general questions of what security is, how it is best understood or measured, and how to best improve prospects for people’s security around the globe. There are three prominent approaches to historiography favored by scholars of security: the Past as Scientific Hypothesis; the Past as Portent of Possible Futures; and the Past as Context. These approaches are somewhat simplistic and it is better to consider them as an introduction to thinking about historiographical approaches rather than using them as a literal map to the terrain of historical research in Security Studies.
The book offers a wide range of analyses and a good introduction of international security and international relations which includes the various dimensions of contemporary debates about security and security studies. The best part of this book that interests me is gendering of war, war on terrorism, securitization of Hurricane Katrina and trauma that reproduces insecurities and emancipation.