Lecture 1: Introduction to the Course, What is security, how do we
study it. Interdisciplinary approaches to security
Williams, P. D., & McDonald, M. (2018).Chapter 1, An Introduction to Security Studies (pages
1-14) in Security Studies: an introduction
● Meaning of security
○ Social science: security is an ‘essentially contested concept’ - a concept for which, by
definition, there can be no consensus on its meaning (security means different things to
different people)
○ International relations: alleviation of threats to cherished values - this definition makes
security unavoidably political (i.e. plays a key role in deciding who gets what, when and
how in world politics)
■ “A powerful political tool in claiming attention for priority items in the
competititon for government attention”
■ It matters a lot who gets to decide what security means, what issues make it to
security agendas, how those issues should be dealt with, and what happens when
different visions of security collide
What is security studies? A very short introduction (brief overview of how the field of security studies has
developed)
● Security studies is understood as an area of inquiry loosely focussed around a set of basic but
fundamental questions; the answers to which have changed, and will continue to change over time
● The 1st major attempt to provide an intellectual history of how international security has been
studied argued that the interplay of 5 forces is particularly central to understanding how the field
has evolved: great power politics, technology, key events, the internal dynamics of academic
debates, and institutionalization (the process through which networks form and resources are
allocated)
● Security has meant very different things to people depending on their time and place in human
history
● As a subject of professional academic inquiry, security studies is usually thought of as a recent
and largely European/American invention that came into prominence after WW2
○ In this version, security studies is seen as one of the most important subfields of
international relations
● Security during the Cold War
○ Dominant strategy of security studies: advocating political realism and the 4 S’s (states,
strategy, science, and the status quo)
○ States were both the most important agents and referents of security in international
politics
○ Strategy: devising the best means of employing the threat and use of military force
○ Scientific: authentic, objective knowledge, using the scientific method (e.g. physics) - to
build reliable knowledge
○ Status quo: traditional security studies wanted to preserve the status quo
■ Security policies understood as preventing radical and revolutionary change to
international society while maintaining the position of their own states within it
, ● A key development in security in 1983 - Barry Buzan’s book fundamentally undermined at least 2
of the 4 S’s of traditional security studies
○ Security wasn’t just about states, but related to all human collectives
○ Security can’t be confined to an inherently inadequate focus on military force
● Buzan’s alternative approach argued that the security of human collectivities (not just states) was
affected by factors in 5 major sectors, each of which had it own focal point and way of ordering
priorities:
○ Military security: interplay between armed offensive and defensive capabilities of states
and states’ perceptions of each other’s intentions
■ Study of military security should be seen as one subset of security studies and
referred to as strategic studies
○ Political security: focused on the organizational stability of states, systems of government
and the ideologies that give them their legitimacy
○ Economic security: revolved around access to resources, finance, markets necessary for
welfare and state power
○ Societal security: sustainability and evolution of traditional language, culture, religious
and national identity
○ Environmental security: maintenance of biosphere
● Buzan’s work paid little attention to the gendered dimensions of security - but its second edition
in 1991 provided a timely way of thinking about security after the Cold War that challenged the
field’s preoccupation with military force
● Despite these changes, there are many problems with continuing to think of security studies as a
subfield of IR - so it is unhelpful to think of security studies as just as subfield of IR
○ Inter-state relations are just one aspect of the security dynamics - but not the only
important actors and not only important referent objects for security
○ Traditional security studies is accused of being written largely by Westerners for western
governments - questions, issues, ways of thinking traditionally considered most important
in the field weren’t neutral or natural but were for someone and for some purpose
○ Many of today’s security problems are so complex and interdependent that they require
analysis that IR can’t alone provide - variety of disciplines needed (e.g. understanding
causes of terrorism involves psychological understanding)
4 central questions which help delineate the contours of the field as it exists today (defining a field of
inquiry: 4 fundamental questions)
1. What is security?
a. We accept that security is an essentially contested concept
b. Security is most commonly associated with the alleviation of threats to cherished values
(especially those which, left unchecked, threaten the survival of a particular referent
object in the near future)
i. Although security and survival are related, they aren’t the same: security is best
understood as “survival-plus” the plus being some freedom and life-determining
threats
c. 2 prevalent philosophies of security
, i. Security as being synonymous with the accumulation of material power - security
is a commodity (to be secure, actors must possess certain things like property,
money, weapons, etc.) - material power is thought to be the route to security (the
more military power actors can accumulate, the more secure they will be
1. Promote military strength
ii. Security based on emancipation (a concern with justice and human rights) -
security as a relationship between different actors rather than a commodity
1. Relationships may either be understood in negative terms (security is
about the absence of something threatening - freedom from) or positive
terms (phenomena that are enabling and making things possible -
freedom to)
2. True security doesn’t come from the ability to exercise power over
others, rather from cooperating to achieve security without depriving
others of it
a. “International security must rest on a commitment to joint
survival rather than on the threat of mutual destruction”
3. Promote justice and human rights
d. So, security involves gaining a degree of confidence about our relationships that comes
with sharing certain commitments with other actors, which provide a degree of
reassurance and predictability - so it is not particular commodities, but relationships
between actors concerned that is a crucial factor in understanding security and insecurity
i. E.g. while the US think North Korea’s possession of nuclear power is a big
source of insecurity, they don’t feel the same way about France’s or UK’s nuclear
weapons
2. Whose security are we talking about?
a. Without a referent object, there can be no threats or discussion of security - so we need to
be clear about the referent objects
b. In human history, the central focus of history has been people
c. But within academic IR, security was often merged with the state
d. Debate continues over who or what should be the ultimate referent object for security
studies
i. For many decades, the dominant answer was that states were the most important
referent objects
ii. After the cold war, this position was challenged as some argued for priority to be
given to human beings - human security
1. But then the problem is which humans to prioritize
2. “Human security is not a concern with weapons. It is a concern with
human dignity. In the last analysis, it is a child who didn’t die, a disease
that didn’t spread, an ethnic tension that didn’t explode, a dissident who
wasn’t silenced, a human spirit that wasn’t crushed”
iii. A 3rd approach has focused on society as the most important object because to be
human is to be part of specific social groups
iv. Another perspective approached the question as a level of analysis problem:
offered a framework for thinking about referent objects from the lowest level (the
