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Politics Notes Critical Security Studies Notes

Problem Solving Theory Vs Critical Theory Notes

Updated Problem Solving Theory Vs Critical Theory Notes

Critical Security Studies Notes

Critical Security Studies

Approximately 11 pages

Looking for DETAILED, CONCISE and CITED notes on Critical Security Studies? To ensure effective revision and exam success, my notes are structured to correspond with past paper questions and possible variations. For trickier concepts like 'performativity' or 'biopower', I prefer to use charts and/or clear subheadings (e.g. 'What is X?', 'How has X Changed?', 'Key Ideas' and 'Critique'). I also include real-world examples and current affairs throughout....

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The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Critical Security Studies Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Problem-Solving Theory VS. Critical Theory

QUESTIONS

Section A:

  • How do critical approaches to security challenge/propose alternative understandings of security to traditional, in particular realist, views? Discuss using the ‘Feminism & Gender Studies’ approach to security. [2018, 2017, 2016, 2014]

  • ‘The focus of security analysis should be on investigating what security does rather than on defining what security is’. Discuss this statement with reference to the ‘Feminism & Gender Studies’ approach to security. [2018]

  • What should be seen as the referent object of security and why? Critically discuss using the ‘Feminist & Gender Studies’ approach to security. [2015]

  • ‘All theory is for someone and for some purpose’ (Cox, 1981). Critically evaluate this statement and its implications using the ‘Feminism & Gender Studies’ approach to security. [2017, 2015]

In 1981, Robert Cox contended that ‘theory is always for someone and for some purpose’. There is, accordingly, no such thing as theory per se, where theory denotes a framework of general propositions or laws about the world, divorced from a standpoint in time and space. He identifies two ways of thinking about IR:

PROBLEM-SOLVING (REALIST) THEORY

Security studies originated from neorealist IR theory, and began with the explicit mandate of solving the problem of war and instability in world politics. It has a clear referent object of analysis (the state) and a clear goal (explaining why states go to war). As such, security studies is defined as ‘the study of the threat, use and control of military force’. [Stephen Walt]

Breaking it down…

  1. Positivism – asserts that scholars can attain and produce knowledge of the world in an objective and value-neutral fashion.

  • Takes the world as it is, and assumes there are perennial rules/’enduring recurrent features’ of world politics, namely: the state, international anarchy (i.e. the absence of a supreme authority to enforce order), power politics and human egoism. These ‘rules’ are directly observable by measuring material forces, e.g. state interactions, military size, nuclear weapon stockpiles, etc.

  1. State-centrism – the state as referent object and provider of security.

CRITICAL THEORY

Although by no means a cohesive research project, CSS orients around 3 key themes: [Browning]

  1. A fundamental critique of the ontology, epistemology and normative implications of traditional approaches to security.

  • Paints a static, fatalistic and incomplete image of contemporary IR...

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