scholarly journals Jak zkoumat gender v mezinárodní bezpečnosti? Úvod do feministických bezpečnostních studií

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
Kateřina Krulišová ◽  
Dagmar Rychnovská
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Academic Environment ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Security Research ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Femininity And Masculinity ◽  
Victims Of Violence

Thinking on war, violence and security has always been associated with concepts of femininity and masculinity. Similarly, wars and political transformations also change the notions of the roles of women and men in society. This article shows how the links between gender identities and threat construction, understanding of aggression, or social sensitivity to different types of victims of violence can be studied academically. It introduces feminist security studies, embeds it in the research of international relations and security, and encourages its development in the Czech academic environment. The article introduces key concepts and methods of studying gender in (international) security, identifies key themes in feminist security research, and explains various approaches and types of questions that can be investigated in this area.

Family values? Sexism and heteronormativity in Feminist Evolutionary Analytic (FEA) research

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen M. Kinsella ◽  
Laura Sjoberg
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
Family Values ◽  
The State ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Male Violence ◽  
Security Research ◽  
Sex And Sexuality

AbstractIn this article, we focus on the subset of evolutionary theorising self-identified as Feminist Evolutionary Analytic (FEA) within security studies and International Relations. We offer this accounting in four sections. First, we provide a brief overview of the argument that reproductive interests are the ‘origins’ of international violence. Second, we break down the definitions of gender, sex, and sexuality used in evolutionary work in security studies generally and in FEA specifically, demonstrating a lack of complexity in FEA’s accounts of the potential relations among the three and critiquing their essentialist heteronormative assumptions. Third, we argue that FEA’s failure to reflect on the history and context of evolutionary theorising, much less contemporary feminist critiques, facilitates its forwarding of the state and institutions as primarily neutral and corrective bulwarks against male violence. Fourth, we conclude by outlining what is at stake if we fail to correct for this direction in feminist, IR, and security research. We argue that FEA work misrepresents and narrows the potential for understanding and responding to violence, facilitating the continued instrumentalisation of women’s rights, increased government regulation of sexuality, and a more expansive form of militarism.

Gender and Global Security

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Hudson ◽  
R. Charli Carpenter ◽  
Mary Caprioli
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
Military Training ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Gender Analysis ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Security Dilemma ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Traditional Sense ◽  
Sense Of Power

It is not only gender ambiguity that is securitized in the international arena, but femininity as well. Some scholars argue that conflict over what women are and what they should do is characterized as a risk to national/global security. Meanwhile, there are those who would characterize gender as irrelevant to, or is one of many variables, in thinking about “security.” Feminist international relations (IR) scholars, however, have argued that gender is across all areas of international security, and that gender analysis is transformative of security studies. A redefinition of security in feminist terms that reveals gender as a factor at play can uncover uncomfortable truths about the reality of this world; how the “myth of protection” is a lie used to legitimize war; and how discourse in international politics is constructed of dichotomies and that their deconstruction could lead to benefits for the human race. Feminist work asserts that it is inadequate to define, analyze, or account for security without reference to gender subordination, particularly, the dichotomy of the domination/subordination concept of power. Gender subordination can be found in military training routines that refer to underperforming men as “girls,” or in the use of rape and forced impregnation as weapons of war. It is the traditional sense of “power as dominance” that leads to situations such as the security dilemma.

There is no such thing as society: beyond individualism and statism in international security studies

1993 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Shaw
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
The State ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Conceptual Issue

This article offers a sociological perspective on a major conceptual issue in international relations, the question of ‘security’, and it raises major issues to do with the role of sociological concepts in international studies. For some years now, the work of sociological writers such as Skocpol, Giddens and Mann1 has attracted some interest in international studies. International theorists such as Linklater and Halliday have seen their work as offering a theoretical advance both on realism and on Marxist alternatives. At the same time, these developments have involved the paradox that, as one critic puts it, ‘current sociological theories of the state are increasingly approaching a more traditional view of the state—the state as actor model—precisely at a time when the theory of international relations is getting away from this idea and taking a more sociological form.

Do You Feel Welcome? Gendered Experiences in International Security Studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 216-226
Author(s):  
Maria Rost Rublee ◽  
Emily B Jackson ◽  
Eric Parajon ◽  
Susan Peterson ◽  
Constance Duncombe
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Gender Representation ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Diversity Initiatives ◽  
Negative Experiences ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Old Boys Network

Abstract Unlike in the broader field of international relations, relatively little research on gender representation and gendered experiences exists within the subfield of security studies. This article begins to fill that gap by sharing the results of a 2019 survey of members of the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) of the International Studies Association (ISA). The survey results show striking gender differences in members’ experiences, with women more likely than men to describe ISSS as “insular,” “clubby,” and an “Old Boys’ Network”; more likely to report experiences of hostility and exclusion; and more likely to believe that diversity initiatives are needed. Our analysis reveals that women in the ISSS report (1) harassment, (2) negative experiences participating in various section activities, (3) more significant barriers to attending and being selected for the section's ISA program, and (4) a sense of feeling unwelcome at ISSS meetings, all at higher rates than male respondents.

Returning to the roots of ontological security: insights from the existentialist anxiety literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 875-895
Author(s):  
Karl Gustafsson ◽  
Nina C. Krickel-Choi
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Anthony Giddens ◽  
Key Concepts

Research on ontological security in International Relations (IR) has grown significantly in recent years. However, this scholarship is marked by conceptual ambiguity concerning the meaning of and relationship between the key concepts of ontological insecurity and anxiety. In addition, ontological security scholarship has been criticized for applying a concept that was originally developed for understanding individuals to states, and for being excessively concerned with continuity while largely ignoring change or seeing it as a negative force to be avoided. Despite such issues, however, reflection on the theoretical origins of ontological security remains limited. Based on such reflection, the present article argues that these issues can be circumvented if we return to one of the theoretical precursors of ontological security studies, the existentialist literature on anxiety. R.D. Laing, who coined the term ontological security, was strongly influenced by the existentialist anxiety theorists. Anthony Giddens, however, who drew on Laing and whose understanding of ontological security permeates IR scholarship, explicitly rejected the distinction between normal and neurotic anxiety, which was central to the work of existentialists like Rollo May. This article reintroduces this distinction. Doing so is useful, the article argues, both for providing conceptual clarity and for moving beyond the criticisms of ontological security mentioned above. More generally, the article suggests that ontological security studies has much to gain from drawing on the insights of the existentialist literature on anxiety to a greater extent than has hitherto been the case.

Continuing the Conversation … Some Reflections

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 747-751
Author(s):  
Juanita Elias
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
The Relationship

The diverse collection of short reflections included in this Critical Perspectives section looks to continue a conversation—a conversation that played out in the pages of this journal (Elias 2015) regarding the relationship between two strands of feminist international relations scholarship: feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist international political economy (IPE). In this forum, the contributors return to some of the same ground, but in doing so, they bring in new concerns and agendas. New empirical sites of thinking through the nexus between security and political economy from a feminist perspective are explored: war, women's lives in postconflict societies, and international security governance institutions and practices.

Is Strategic Studies Rationalist, Materialist, and A-Critical? Reconnecting Security and Strategy

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 494-510
Author(s):  
Pascal Vennesson
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
International Security ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Thomas Schelling ◽  
Strategic Studies

AbstractBetween the 1940s and the 1960s, strategy was at the heart of security studies and closely intertwined with International Relations (IR). Over the past three decades, however, the study of strategy has been relegated to a secondary position in the international security subfield and marginalized in IR theorizing. One important source of this disconnect is the challenge mounted by critical security advocates, who sought to reorient the study of security away from strategic studies. They reached into the philosophy of science and pulled out three familiar dichotomies, rationalism/constructivism, materialism/idealism, and problem-solving/critical theorizing, that they could utilize within security debates. Specifically, they argue that strategic studies leaves out too much of what is really important for security and world politics because it is rationalist, materialist, and retains an uncritical view of knowledge production. In this article, I turn the critical security conventional wisdom on its head and show that strategic studies, exemplified by the ideas of Carl von Clausewitz and Thomas Schelling, actually transcends these dichotomies and hence offers an indispensable source of insights for both security studies and IR.

The Global Politics of Medicine: Beyond global health, against securitisation theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 961-987 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALISON HOWELL
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Global Health ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Psychological Resilience ◽  
Politics Of Medicine

AbstractThis article makes the case for a new field in International Relations (IR): the Global Politics of Medicine. It argues that significant avenues of research can be opened up by focusing on medicine and the life sciences, in order to both challenge current IR theories, and develop new theoretical and empirical insights in IR. In particular, the article challenges the validity of securitisation theory, and specifically the argument that health has been securitised. Showing instead that medicine and warfare have been imbricated from the nineteenth century as strategies of population, it challenges securitisation theory's ahistoricism and its assumption that social security and international security (and the norm/exception) are analytically divisible. Bringing this into the present through the examples of triage, psychological resilience, and genetic intelligence in counterinsurgency, it traces how warfare and medicine now ambitiously seek to treat populations as sets of individual bodies. Arguing that we cannot retreat to some mythical state of politics ‘prior’ to securitisation, it draws out how the fields of war, health, and medicine are nonetheless highly contested. The article concludes by challenging the fields of Global Health, war, and security studies, but also suggests novel routes for pursuing the study of the Global Politics of Medicine.

scholarly journals Public Health in the Framework of the International Security. A Constructive Approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-6
Author(s):  
Sergiu Viorel Borsa
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Final Conclusion ◽  
Constructive Approach ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Long Term Consequences

AbstractThe article highlights the fact that public health is an element of the security dimension that must be included on the priority agenda of specialists in the fields of international relations and security studies. There are arguments in favor of this theory. The costs of materializing threats to human security in general and public health in particular are particularly high, with serious long-term consequences. Global trends and prospects for the implications that can be generated are likely to change the world’s security landscape, and increasing global connectivity increases the degree of uncertainty about public health implications. Non-traditional issues arising from technological change can induce risks, whose management may go beyond institutional capacities. On the other hand, the new types of wars, increasingly interconnected with various forms of risk materialization, make this mission more difficult. The final conclusion is that these risks need to be assessed to ensure national, regional or even global security, and international cooperation for prevention and counseling.

The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Security ◽  
International Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Empirical Record

What kind of nuclear strategy and posture does the United States need to defend itself and its allies? According to conventional wisdom, the answer to this question is straightforward: the United States needs the ability to absorb an enemy nuclear attack and respond with a devastating nuclear counterattack. These arguments are logical and persuasive, but, when compared to the empirical record, they raise an important puzzle. Empirically, we see that the United States has consistently maintained a nuclear posture that is much more robust than a mere second-strike capability. How do we make sense of this contradiction? Scholarly deterrence theory, including Robert Jervis’s seminal book, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, argues that the explanation is simple—policymakers are wrong. This book takes a different approach. Rather than dismiss it as illogical, it explains the logic of American nuclear strategy. It argues that military nuclear advantages above and beyond a secure, second-strike capability can contribute to a state’s national security goals. This is primarily because nuclear advantages reduce a state’s expected cost of nuclear war, increasing its resolve, providing it with coercive bargaining leverage, and enhancing nuclear deterrence. This book provides the first theoretical explanation for why military nuclear advantages translate into geopolitical advantages. In so doing, it resolves one of the most intractable puzzles in international security studies. The book also explains why, in a world of growing dangers, the United States must possess, as President Donald J. Trump declared, a nuclear arsenal “at the top of the pack.”

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