Security studies in International Political Sociology (original) (raw)

Few would contest the claim that the study of security is prima facie inseparable from international matters, that it engages politics in one way or another and that it engages social issues. And yet the contentiousness of these three categories—the international, the political, and the social—, the assumptions on which they rest, the discourses that are mobilised in their names, the empirical fields that nourish them, the scholars, policy-makers and practitioners who make claims to legitimate oversight over their practices and jurisdiction over their practical implications, invite a critical pause in their increasingly rapid development. Security as a scholarly field, as a set of actors, institutions and practices, has evolved at a pace that has put its supporting concepts and practices under considerable pressure. This concerns both the way that the academic discipline of security studies, and those in close proximity to it, have evolved and the way that research-based (and non-research-based) security practices have themselves become producers and consumers of security knowledge. Security studies orchestrates in a unique and productive way the interaction of the international, the political and the sociological. It puts into play their conceptual and practical interaction, plays gatekeeper to neighbouring discourses seeking to link to the discourse of security studies, regulates the flow of meaning between the elements of security studies, manages practices and governs norms. Security studies encourages and resists, legitimates and discredits. Like any institutionalised academic discipline motivates and interdicts, generates credit and debt, mobilises faith and modulates disbelief.