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Learning Outcomes

Chapter 2: Feminist security studies

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Provide a persuasive analysis of the claim that ‘gender is not a synonym for women’ (Carver 1996);
  • Explain what it means to see gender as ‘not only a noun … and a verb … but also a logic’ in security studies (Shepherd 2010b: 5);
  • Demonstrate the strengths and limitations of a feminist approach to security.

Chapter 3: Human security

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Demonstrate their understanding of how human security challenges orthodox conceptions of international security in terms of whose security and what is being secured against, and therefore enhances contemporary analysis of global security issues.
  • Explain the limitations of the human security approach particularly as it has been defined and utilized by scholars and policy-makers as a problem-solving tool to date.
  • Evaluate the ways in which the human security approach can maintain its critical value while at the same time effectively engaging policy-makers in order to ultimately transform international security policy and practice.

Chapter 4: Green security

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Understand the rationale for narrating environmental degradation as a security threat
  • Analyse the ways in which green security changes meaning based on different conceptions of (in)security
  • Demonstrate awareness of the main critiques of environmental security

Chapter 5: Securitisation theory

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Explain and identify the basic mechanisms of securitization theory;
  • Evaluate the usefulness and contribution of securitization theory; and
  • Apply securitization theory to international security issues.

Chapter 6: Security as emancipation

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Identify the main assumptions underlying the idea of security as emancipation, as well as the features that distinguish it from other critical approaches.
  • Mobilize the emancipatory approach in the study of a security issue, using appropriate research questions and methodological tools.
  • Assess the contribution of the security as emancipation approach to an increasingly interconnected field of critical security studies.

Chapter 7: Poststructural security studies

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Explain the range of ways that poststructuralist scholars have understood and researched security;
  • Demonstrate how security and insecurity are enabled by language and its distinctive strategies of power;
  • Account for how models of feminist and poststructural ethics could improve security policy and speech

Chapter 8: Postcolonial security studies

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Explain the specific contributions of postcolonial security studies and the ways in which these contributions challenge conventional, Euro- and state-centric approaches to the study of security.
  • Explain why the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty is perceived as unequal by many non-Western states.
  • Explain how progressive, cooperative attempts to secure global peace can play a part in the production of an unequal world, thus requiring linking peace to justice.

Chapter 9: Quantitative Methods

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Recognize the potential for using quantitative methods for reflective and constitutive research;
  • Explain the ways that quantitative methods can aid critical security studies research specifically; and
  • Evaluate the genesis and pitfalls of the ‘quantitative/qualitative’ divide in theorizing security.

Chapter 10: Archival research and document analysis

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Identify and critically engage with basic approaches to historiography and apply basic logical approaches to reasoning about the past;
  • Locate and evaluate primary sources, understand the basics of interpreting sources and apply an analytical framework to the collection of sources;
  • Discuss the pitfalls to be avoided by social scientists who use an historical approach to critical security studies.

Chapter 11: Ethnographic methods

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Outline the key characteristics of an interpretive ethnographic methodology;
  • Describe the stages of conducting ethnographic research and identify the different methods that can be used;
  • Identify potential limitations of ethnographic methods.

Chapter 12: Participatory action research

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Identify the key concepts, techniques, and actors associated with PAR.
  • Critically discuss the methodological strengths and limitations of PAR in the study of security.
  • Evaluate the ethical functions of research methodology.

Chapter 13: Elite interviews

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Explain the benefits of undertaking focused interviews in the field of Critical Security Studies and the various challenges involved in undertaking elite interviews, relating to research ethics, power relations, and the influence of the researcher on the interview process
  • Evaluate the ways in which carrying out focused interviews can be further enhanced by ethnographic methods and the relative benefits and costs of undertaking non-ethnographic and ethnographic interviews; and
  • Reflect critically on the different methods for recording interview data.

Chapter 14: Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Understand the obstacles and benefits of using CAQDAS in their research;
  • Explain the multiple approaches that can be deployed using CAQDAS to guide their research methods; and
  • Deploy basic CAQDAS techniques against qualitative datasets. 

Chapter 15: Network analysis

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Understand the theoretical assumptions underlying network analysis
  • Evaluate the appropriateness of a network analysis framework for research conducted in the field of critical security studies
  • Formulate questions relevant for critical security studies while using a network analysis approach and its technical toolkit

Chapter 16: Predication, presupposition and subject-positioning

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Explain the key theoretical assumptions of discourse analysis.
  • Explain how the methodological concepts of predication, presupposition and subject-positioning can inform a discourse analysis.
  • To apply the methodological concepts to issues of global security.

Chapter 17: Deconstruction as ‘anti-Method’

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Describe some of the key debates and approaches surrounding an anti-methodological approach to world politics; 
  • Outline how and where deconstruction can be applied to global politics;
  • Apply a deconstructive approach to examples of security/insecurity in global politics.

Chapter 18: Visual analysis and the aesthetics of security

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Examine  ‘visual’, ‘representational’ and ‘pictorial’ themes within critical approaches to security
  • Examine the methodological strengths and weaknesses of aesthetic accounts of visual security
  • Locate ‘aesthetic’ accounts of the political, placing visual readings of security within a broader body of interpretive IR

Chapter 19: Conclusion: The process, practice and ethics of research

On completion, readers should be able to:

  • Design and construct research projects on security.
  • Consider the contexts and constraints that impact on research.
  • Reflect on the ethical issues accompanying the research process.