Notes on the lectures from the course (2024) Security: Actors, Institutions and Constellations.
INCLUDES notes from lectures 1-7 (Total: 26 pages).
Security: Actors, Institutions and Constellations Lecture Notes
(Lectures 1-7)
Table of Contents
Lecture 1.1 Introduction 1
Lecture 1.2 Technology in Security Studies & Beyond 2
Lecture 2: Femicides Across a Region 4
Lecture 3: Research, Disengagement & Deradicalisation Work 7
Lecture 4: The EU, the Governance of Security & the Case of Ukraine 10
Lecture 5: Crisis Management - Governance When it Matters Most 14
Lecture 6: Broadening & Deepening The Study Of Intelligence 18
Lecture 7: Sanctions & (In)Security 23
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Lecture 1.1 Introduction
The Fear of Violent Death
Hobbes’ Moral & Political Philosophy: Theory of the state, solving a series of questions & problems.
It addressed the vast insecurities of the 1650s, reordering political society (state as a unit of power,
doing & politics, & a definitive notion of the people within).
➔ The birth of statism = radical interpersonal insecurity, violence internationally & centralised
violence (via the sovereign > the heavens).
➔ Results:
◆ Creation of the 3 unique agents (the individual, the people & the sovereign).
◆ Creation of:
● Legitimacy = what the sovereign says is legitimate.
● Purpose = move past religious notions towards 1 religious/overarching order
in 1 state.
● Coordination = definitive hierarchy (sovereign → governments → people).
● Accountability = social contract to the people.
➔ Hobbes as a postmodern critical theorist:
◆ Radical of the highest order.
◆ Critical of the aristocratic-dominated cities, imperialism, divine monarchy, gender
norms, & religious lunacy.
➔ Hobbesian statism finally accepted around 1990 (350 years later) with the final collapse of
the imperial powers (e.g. African decolonisation, collapse of the Soviet Bloc) & the creation
of new states.
◆ The birth of modern International Relations (IR) theory = realism, liberal
internationalism & constructivism.
3 puzzles:
1. Why was IR so boring?
● It is NOT enough to describe that IR was so boring → it has remained persistently boring.
● The content & academic substance remained unchanged.
2. Why, sociologically, did IR stay so boring for so long?
● It actively did NOT change.
● Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Truth:
○ The truths accepted about the world & our place within it are socially
constructed illusions (‘whimsical lies’).
○ This matters because these “dead, boring ideas” are used by academics to
organise their frameworks & constructs.
➔ Dead Ideas: Those that are stable & can be linked up (fixed in time).
● Professional commitment to pass these ideas onto the ‘leaders of tomorrow’.
● To maintain structure & “keep jobs” (“promote those that carry out safe studies”).
➔ Safety = “herding around safe ideas.”
3. Why, scientifically, did IR stay so boring for so long?
● Kuhn’s normal science & paradigmatic crisis
○ Columbarias = professional imperative to reorganise the dead ideas & add new
layers on top.
vs.
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○ Paradigms = paradoxically, great scientific advances require risks that go beyond
the scientific domain. Good science is boring! It is not a task of endless discovery;
it is “mopping up”.
➔ Core principles about what we take in the world.
➔ Science works by constraining the scope of investigation, until small,
specific contributions can be made.
4. A secret fourth puzzle:
● The weird thing about getting locked into paradigms is that the herd (Nietzsche) &
scientists (Kuhn) often get their paradigmatic founders quite wrong.
➔ Nietzsche envisions artistic virtuoso.
➔ Kuhn envisions a rare genius.
● BUT the process of truth-making runs backwards too.
CLAIM = there is a different way of seeing the world than via standard IR perspectives (anomalies
from IR simply pile up). From description to analysis:
● Broadening & deepening is descriptively right, BUT analytically wrong.
➔ A paradigmatic shift, with all the professional, scientific & psychological dynamics
that follow.
● Paradigmatically incompatible = centripetal IR vs. centrifugal Critical Security Studies (CSS).
➔ CSS with new agents, levels of analysis & topics (looking a lot like IR 30 years ago).
● Turing the critical lens back on ourselves:
○ The problem is paradigmatic.
○ “Objective security assessment is beyond our means of analysis; the main point is
that actors & their audiences securitize certain issues as a specific form of political
act.” (Buzan).
Welcome to the “new dark ages”:
● Endless violence at all levels (i.e. brutalism, hypocrisy, fanaticism, mass violence, mass
meaninglessness).
● The world is changing.
● Threat of CSS becoming a congealment of a series of ‘dead ideas’.
4 themes = agency coordination, accountability & legitimacy.
Lecture 1.2 Technology in Security Studies & Beyond
An Outlook on Technology & Security Actors
Broad trends & recent developments in the field of security:
● Data-driven practices.
● From reactive → proactive models.
● Surveillance of data flows & infrastructures.
● Pluralisation of security actors (partnerships & security networks).
The world is changing quickly:
