This chapter reflects on the implications of treating the environmental crisis as a security issue. It engages directly with the questions: Security for whom, where, and at whose expense? By exploring these questions, the chapter demonstrates how claims about the environment and security make visible, and securable, particular worlds while obscuring others, and rendering them insecure. It then considers three approaches to environment and security: early links between the environment and security which focused on how environmental issues impacted on the traditional concerns of security such as violent conflict, the state, and national security; the human security perspective; and the ecological security approach. Ultimately, we can see how attempts to secure the environment are connected to symbolic violence that generates other forms of political violence.
Chapter
Gary M. Shiffman
This chapter examines the concept of economic security as a framework for analysing and countering organized violence. It first provides a brief historical overview of the economic science of security and applies economic theory to Security Studies. Through various case studies, this approach allows the reader to understand how states leverage traditional economic tools to influence, alter, and deter another actor’s behaviour. The chapter considers three categories of organized violence: warfare, crime, and insurgency. It shows that the various decision makers involved in combating organized violence have different goals and face different constraints. It also describes five vectors of economic incentives: goals, resource constraints, institutional constraints, information, and time. Finally, it discusses four economic tools of security policy: sanctions, trade, finance, and aid.
Chapter
Gary M. Shiffman
This chapter provides an economic framework for analysing and countering organized violence. Looking closely at economics as a scientific approach to understanding human behaviour provides insight into the real-life of criminals, terrorists, and insurgents. Individuals make decisions under conditions of scarcity, and markets, firms, and entrepreneurs organize much of human behaviour. Understanding these dynamics can inform how policy-makers, analysts, and operators promote security.
Chapter
This chapter examines various dimensions of security and insecurity within states. It first considers different conceptualizations of security and the range of areas within which it may be applied before discussing security and insecurity in the state of nature. It then explores the impact of security and insecurity on global politics, Thomas Hobbes' ideas about security and insecurity, and collective security as embodied in the United Nations (UN). It also reviews some pressing security challenges in the post-Cold War period and the broadening of the security agenda to encompass more recent concerns such as human security, environmental security, and energy security. Finally, it analyses the ‘war on terror’ that came in response to 9/11, raising further questions concerning how best to deal with nonconventional threats.
Chapter
Sara E. Davies
This chapter describes the increasingly prominent representation of health as a security issue. It begins by presenting the ‘origin’ story of health security that has led to the contemporary practices we see today in the WHO and UN Security Council. The chapter then looks at the different approaches to health security—namely, human security and national security—and considers why security is mobilized to respond to health issues. The focus here is on public health events and their location (regions and borders). The chapter also examines who the ‘peoples’ to be protected from the dangers of health security are. The COVID-19 pandemic reveals that despite a rapidly emerging global public health threat endangering everyone, with some more exposed to harm than others, the response was not equitable and reinforced existing hierarchies.
Chapter
Mike Bourne
This chapter highlights weapons-systems as a central aspect of the question: ‘Security how?’ Weapons are a central and pervasive aspect of the material, institutional, and discursive mobilizations of security. As such, weapons have long been both a tool and a measure of power. Weapons-politics reveals what we might think of as lethal legitimations: the legitimation of killing, the preparation for killing, and the distinctions (racial, colonial, gendered, religious, class, civilizational) that allow us to take for granted that killing is inherent to security. The chapter poses three questions about security and violence that arise through weapons-politics: Does the manner of violence matter? How are weapons controlled? How is weapons-politics entangled with other forms of violence and security? These questions show that weapons-systems are the materialization of violence of all types.
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This chapter discusses what it means to adopt a critical perspective to analyse security. It highlights the fact that critical perspectives share a common concern with identifying and transforming forms of domination and oppression. To identify how security may be connected to domination and oppression requires uncovering the logics of the socio-political order in which a security mobilization takes place. The chapter then looks at the different ways that we can conceptualize power and how power can (re)produce hierarchies through identities, ideas, interests, institutions, and infrastructures. It also illustrates how forms of domination and oppression made possible by security mobilizations can be contested and resisted.
Book
Edited by Alan Collins
Contemporary Security Studies provides an introduction to Security Studies. It features a wide breadth and depth of coverage of the different theoretical approaches to the study of security and the ever-evolving range of issues that dominate the security agenda in the twenty-first century. In addition to covering a large range of topical security issues, from terrorism and inter-state armed conflict to cyber-security, health, and transnational crime, the fifth edition features updated coverage of the on-going Syrian crisis, the deepening crisis effecting Liberal Internationalism and, while early in his term of office, President Trump’s stamp on international security. Throughout, readers are encouraged to question their own preconceptions and assumptions, and to use their own judgement to critically evaluate key approaches and ideas. To help them achieve this, each chapter is punctuated with helpful learning features including ‘key ideas’, ‘think points’ and case studies, demonstrating the real world applications and implications of the theory.
Chapter
Jon Barnett and Geoff Dabelko
This chapter examines the concept of environmental security, focusing on how it has both broadened and deepened the issue of security. It first traces the origins of environmental security, showing that it is the product of a merger of international environmental agreements, efforts by the peace movement to contest the meaning and practice of security, the proliferation of new security issues in the post-Cold War era, recognition that environmental changes pose grave risks to human well-being, and the growing community of research practice that seeks to build peace through natural resource management. The chapter goes on to consider the different meanings of environmental security, along with four major categories of environmental security problem: how environmental change can be a factor in violent conflict or a risk to national security, how war and preparation for war can damage the environment, and how environmental change can pose a risk to human security.
Chapter
Stefan Elbe
This chapter examines the impact of health on security. It first considers how health and human security are connected via diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. In particular, it looks at health security, economic security, and food security. It then describes some recently emerging infectious diseases, such as SARS, influenza pandemic, and Ebola, that are now also recognized as threats to national security. It also discusses diseases that are known to pose narrower threats to bio-security within the context of international efforts to combat terrorism, focusing on disease-causing biological agents such as anthrax, smallpox, and plague. The chapter concludes by contrasting two different ways in which the health-security nexus can be understood. Two case studies are presented, one relating to the impact of HIV/AIDS on the South African National Defence Force, and the other relating to the Aum Shinrikyo cult’s Sarin nerve gas attacks in Tokyo.
Book
Edited by Alan Collins
Contemporary Security Studies provides an introduction to Security Studies. It features a wide breadth and depth of coverage of the different theoretical approaches to the study of security and the ever-evolving range of issues that dominate the security agenda in the twenty-first century. In addition to covering a large range of topical security issues, from terrorism and inter-state armed conflict to cyber-security, health, and transnational crime, the sixth edition features an examination of popular culture and its implications for security, as well as coverage of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout, readers are encouraged to question their own preconceptions and assumptions, and to use their own judgement to critically evaluate key approaches and ideas. To help them achieve this, each chapter is punctuated with helpful learning features including ‘key ideas’, ‘think points’ and case studies, demonstrating the real-world applications and implications of the theory.
Chapter
Geoff Dabelko
This chapter discusses the concept of environmental security. It explains the way environment and climate change have both broadened and deepened the issue of security. It describes the evolution of the concept as a merger of international environmental agreements, efforts to contest the meaning and practice of security, the proliferation of new security issues in the post-Cold War era, recognition that environmental and climate changes pose grave risks to human well-being, and the growing community of research practice that seeks to build peace through natural resource management. The chapter examines the different meanings of environmental security, and then explains four major categories of environmental security problems—namely, the way environmental change can be a factor in violent conflict, the way environmental change can be a risk to national security, the way war and preparation for war can damage the environment, and the way environmental change can be a risk to human security. It explains how environmental security can mean different things to different people and can apply to vastly different referent objects in ways that sometimes have very little to do with environmental change.
Chapter
Alan Collins
This chapter provides an introduction to Security Studies, the sub-discipline of International Relations that deals with the study of security. War and the threat to use force are part of the security equation, but the prevalence of threats is far-reaching for Security Studies. They encompass dangers ranging from pandemic and environmental degradation to terrorism and inter-state armed conflict. The latter is actually a sub-field of Security Studies and is known as Strategic Studies. This edition examines differing approaches to the study of security, such as realism, liberalism, social constructivism, and postcolonialism. It also investigates the deepening and broadening of security to include military security, regime security, societal security, environmental security, and economic security. Finally, it discusses a range of traditional and non-traditional issues that have emerged on the security agenda, including weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, energy security, and health.
Chapter
Stefan Elbe and Eva Hilberg
What threat can diseases pose to security? The sheer breadth of possible answers to this question has become increasingly evident during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which was caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This chapter explores three such links between health and security. First, some diseases are identified as threats to human security. The human security framework draws particular attention to diseases—such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis—that remain endemic in many low-income countries, that continue to cause millions of deaths annually, and that also pose substantial challenges to the survival and well-being of individuals and communities. Second, some emerging infectious diseases—such as SARS, pandemic flu, Ebola, and COVID-19—are identified as threats to national security because their rapid spread can cause high death tolls and trigger significant economic disruption. Finally, some diseases are also identified as narrower threats to bio-security within the context of international efforts to combat terrorism. Here concerns have focused on the spectre of a terrorist attack using a disease-causing biological agent such as anthrax, smallpox, or plague. The chapter concludes by contrasting two different ways of understanding this health–security nexus: as an instance of securitization or medicalization.
Chapter
Anna Schliehe
This chapter explores prisons and camps, and their inherent security logics and security practices from the global to the intimate. It begins by illustrating how the growth of prisons and camps is connected to state building and national and global dimensions of security. The chapter then considers how order and security are institutionally produced—that is, how these are intrinsically designed into spaces of incarceration. By exposing the visceral realities of encampment and incarceration, from the micro-practices to the macro-issues on a global scale, we can question security for whom and at whose expense. By asking these questions, we gain better insights into how a generated need for national and international security has led to unprecedented numbers of people who are incarcerated or displaced.
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Maria Stern
This chapter addresses the politics of development and its relation to security. It highlights how the mobilization of security via development may aim to address forms of political violence but can also (re)produce them. The chapter specifically poses the questions: ‘Security for whom and from what?’ and ‘Security when and where?’ By posing these questions, it draws attention to how security is mobilized in the crafting and enactment of development policies, or security-development/peacebuilding initiatives, and the security logics that underpin them. This helps render visible the hierarchies these logics reproduce, the forms of violence they enable, and the forms of knowledge that they privilege.
Chapter
This text provides an introduction to Security Studies, the sub-discipline of International Relations that deals with the study of security. War and the threat to use force are part of the security equation, but the prevalence of threats is far-reaching for Security Studies. They encompass dangers ranging from pandemic and environmental degradation to terrorism and inter-state armed conflict. The latter is actually a sub-field of Security Studies and is known as Strategic Studies. This edition examines differing approaches to the study of security such as realism, liberalism, social constructivism, and postcolonialism. It also investigates the deepening and broadening of security to include military security, regime security, societal security, environmental security, and economic security. Finally, it discusses a range of traditional and non-traditional issues that have emerged on the security agenda, including weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, energy security, and health.
Chapter
Sam Raphael and Doug Stokes
This chapter examines growing concerns over global energy security due to rising demand for fossil fuels by industrialized economies coupled with increasing uncertainties over future energy reserves. It considers the implications of increasing energy insecurity amongst the world’s major powers for international security by focusing on the politics of oil. After providing an overview of the problem of energy security, the chapter discusses the connection between energy security and International Relations theories such as liberalism, realism, and historical materialism. It then explores the link between energy security and human insecurity, and how the search for energy security by states in the global North affects the human security of communities in the oil-rich global South. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the role played by the United States in underpinning global energy security in the post-war era, and the impact that this has had for oil-rich regions.
Chapter
Myriam Dunn Cavelty
This chapter examines the implications of cyber-security for national security. It first provides the necessary technical background on why the information infrastructure is inherently insecure, how computer vulnerabilities are conceptualized, who can exploit them, and how. In particular, it considers definitions and concepts relevant to information security, such as cyberspace, Big Data, and hacking. It then describes three interconnected cyber-security discourses: the first is about computer viruses and worms; the second deals with the interrelationship between cyber-crime and cyber-espionage; the third is concerned with the double-edged sword of fighting wars in the information domain and the need for critical infrastructure protection. Based on this, the chapter evaluates a range of protection measures from each of the three discourses. It concludes by suggesting that the level of cyber-risk is generally exaggerated.
Chapter
Ole Wæver and Barry Buzan
This chapter reflects on the past and present of Security Studies, with a particular focus on the changing periods of theory production and practical problem solving. It begins by tracing the origins and institutional structure of Security Studies, noting that it started out as an American, think-tank based, interdisciplinary field and then became institutionalized as a part of a single discipline, International Relations (IR). Since the 1990s, the field has enjoyed a new period of high theory productivity, but largely in two separate clusters with the United States and Europe as centres of each. Among important developments during the so-called Golden Age of Security Studies were game theory and deterrence theory. The chapter proceeds by examining the stagnation of Security Studies before concluding with an assessment of future prospects and challenges facing the field, citing debates over issues such as human security and emerging non-Western approaches to IR.
