International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   This essay adopts a sociological approach to security. It develops an international political sociology of security practices, subsuming elements from constructivist approaches to security, such as the Aberystwyth, Copenhagen, and Paris approaches ( Wæver 2004 ; c.a.s.e. collective 2006 ; Bigo 2008 ). Following the path of a collective intellectual, discussing in an interdisciplinary way security, liberty, migration, and development, this essay has been written by a collective group of five authors. This collective is part of a larger collective group, called the c.a.s.e. collective, which has already published a long manifesto providing a critique of traditional approaches to security, exclusively grounded in international relations and political science. We will not repeat here the different arguments against the Realist, Liberal, and English Schools of security studies as we prefer to build a new space for thought and discussion which takes what practices of security are and what they do seriously. A large part of the international relations (IR) literature, which claims to be pragmatist, positivist, and realist, in fact ignores the diversity of practices labeled as security and is highly idealist in the neo-platonic sense of the word. They believe in capturing the essence of the world through words. Their search for a definition of security (as ... log in or subscribe to read full text