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Study Questions

Chapter 2: Feminist security studies

  1. Which of the theories of gender presented in this chapter do you find most persuasive, and why?
  2. Are there any analytical limitations to feminist security studies that this chapter does not address?
  3. Cynthia Enloe has written extensively about the importance of a ‘feminist curiosity’ (2004: 1-8). What do you think she means, and (why) do you think it’s important?
  4. What can we learn about security and violence if we pay attention to gender? What can we learn about gender if we pay attention to security and violence?
  5. Does gender matter in/to all security issues? Are there any security issues that would not benefit from a ‘feminist lens’? What are they, and why?

Chapter 3: Human security

  1. How does human security offer a counter discourse to traditional approaches to security? Does this counter discourse widen, deepen and/or transform the way we think about security studies?
  2. Is it important to distinguish between human security, human rights and human development from a theoretical perspective? What about from a policy-perspective? Why or why not?
  3. Of the numerous critiques of human security, which do you find the most convincing in terms of critical theory?
  4. Given that human security has been adopted by policy-makers and intergovernmental organizations, in what ways has the approach sacrificed some of its critical value? How has its critical value been maintained?
  5. How does human security offer a new way of understanding and addressing the global issue of human trafficking? How is the approach limiting?

Chapter 4: Green security

  1. To what extent does the securitisation of the environment work to overcome collective action problems?
  2. Should the environment be an addendum to traditional security issues? Why/Why not?
  3. Does the military have any role to play in environmental protection/conservation?
  4. To what extent does greening securities potentially change our understanding of security?
  5. Should environmental degradation be a security or a development issue? Are the two mutually exclusive?

Chapter 5: Securitisation theory

  1. Who speaks security, and what determines who can speak security?
  2. What has securitization theory added to critical approaches to security?
  3. How ‘critical’ is securitization theory?
  4. Should securitization theory have a normative agenda?
  5. To what extent is securitization theory Western-centric?

Chapter 6: Security as emancipation

  1. Can one be free without feeling safe from threats to life and well-being? In other words, can there be emancipation without security?
  2. How can one deal with conflicting and/or contradictory claims to emancipation?
  3. Who is suspicious of the concept of emancipation and why? To what extent have these suspicions been addressed by the proponents of SAE?
  4. To what extent does the critique of security require an assumption of what is desirable and undesirable?
  5. What are the scholarly benefits and limitations of the broad security ambit of SAE?

Chapter 7: Poststructural security studies

  1. How would you respond to the suggestion that poststructural security studies represent ‘a prolix and self-indulgent discourse that is divorced from the real world’ (Walt 1991: 223)?
  2. What is the difference (or relationship) between theory and practice, according to a poststructural approach to security?
  3. Does poststructural security studies suggest better ways of behaving, making policy and organising global life that would produce more security?
  4. Do you agree with Ken Booth that if poststructuralism in security did not exist, we would have had to invent it? Can, and how can, it be more than a provocation?
  5. How should we conceive, and manage, the relationship between self and other in global security politics?

Chapter 8: Postcolonial security studies

  1. Why is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty perceived as unequal by many states around the world?
  2. Should treaties whose purpose is to make the world safer and more peaceful take into considerations issues of global inequality and justice? Why or why not?
  3. What does a postcolonial approach to security reveal about the study and practice of international relations?
  4. Should one worry about the possible development of nuclear weapons by Iran? How can one articulate that worry in a way that does not reproduce a prejudiced worldview?
  5. What would be most important steps toward the creation of a nuclear-free world? Who should carry the most responsibility for the creation of such a world?

Chapter 9: Quantitative methods

  1. What potential do quantitative methods offer for reflective and constitutive research in Security Studies? What are some potential difficulties or drawbacks of the use of these methods?
  2. How does the quantitative/qualitative divide influence the possibility of using quantitative methods for
  3. What is the relationship between the research questions we ask about Security and the methods that we use to research those questions?
  4. What does a game-theoretic model tell us about the incentive structure for implementing economic sanctions? What does it not tell us?
  5.  How might one begin to design multi-method approaches to understanding security from a critical perspective?

Chapter 10: Archival research and document analysis

  1. Can we make any inferences about securitization processes and internment in the early part of the twentieth century that have analytical relevance today?
  2. Discuss the three approaches to understanding history and make a case that one of these perspectives is superior to the others. What are the strengths and limitations of your historiographical choices?
  3. Discuss the deductive and inductive modes of reasoning. Which mode of reasoning do you think lends itself to better explanations of events in the past? Support your argument with historical examples.
  4. What is a fact? Is it discoverable like a fossil, or is it created, like Bruner’s description of the postmodern umpire? Is there a place in between where facts are discovered and interpreted?
  5. What is the role of narrative in our understanding of the past?

Chapter 11: Ethnographic methods

  1. Is research done using ethnographic methods just 'telling stories' and/or 'navel gazing'?
  2. What factors affect how 'thick' one's description needs to be?
  3. What does the field of 'security' look like?
  4. What are the advantages and disadvantages of including consideration of positionality in one's research?
  5. Are ethnographic methods a realistic option for research in CSS and IR more widely?

Chapter 12: Participatory action research

  1. What type of research is better suited for PAR approaches?  What type of research cannot and should not incorporate PAR strategies?
  2. Central to PAR is the notion of solidarity.  Is solidarity possible?  Should researchers strive for solidarity?  What are the trade-offs or concerns of pursuing normative research? 
  3. In what ways might well-intentioned PAR researchers burden community members or NGOs? How can these concerns be avoided?
  4. We have reviewed Said’s suggestion that the intellectual is someone whose place it is ‘to confront orthodoxy and dogma.’ Identify a current pressing social issue in your community. What are the assumptions necessary for this issue to be a problem? How does deconstruction or de-naturalization of categories affect the issue at hand? Could the issue be addressed in part by seeing in new ways?
  5. Is love a necessary component of conducting research?  If so, how so?  If not, why not? 

Chapter 13: Elite interviews

  1. In what ways might focused interviews enhance the data gathered through documentary research in the field of security studies?
  2. Can you think of particular actors in the international security arena who might be put at risk by agreeing to be interviewed by academic researchers? Why? How might these risks be minimised?
  3. How important is it for the interviewer to establish a relationship of trust with the interviewee? What might cause a break down in trust?
  4. Can you think of any instances when it might be legitimate for the researcher to conceal their identity, or to conceal the true purposes of the research? What are the risks associated with this?
  5. Is it legitimate for the interviewer to use certain behaviours, or to play on particular personal characteristics, during interviews?

Chapter 14: Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software

  1. Do you see the use of CAQDAS as a helpful or problematic to the conduct of security studies research?
  2. As a researcher, how would you go about identifying if the use of CAQDAS was appropriate to your research?
  3. How would you go about designing a research project using CAQDAS to investigate transformations in human security or green security discourses?
  4. In what ways would using CAQDAS in the analysis of elite interviews, ethnography, visual analysis or archival research require the use of different CAQDAS functionalities and data management plans?
  5. In what ways are the CAQDAS visualisation tools useful for researchers?

Chapter 15: Network analysis

  1. Can you think of other actors that could have been meaningfully included in the analysis of the diplomatic exchanges on the issue of nuclear non-proliferation? In other words, are there other national, regional or international actors that have an important part to play in non-proliferation diplomacy? How could the analysis be enhanced by including these new actors and the ties they bring?
  2. Can you think of any other ‘entities’ that could have been mentioned by diplomats in the political declarations we analysed in this chapter, with regard to the issue of nuclear non-proliferation?
  3. How do you interpret the fact that the identity ‘sovereign state’ appears as an isolated node in the semantic network pertaining to the US non-proliferation diplomacy (Box 13.3)?
  4. In the last two graphs that resulted from block-modelling techniques, compare the different relational positions of the identities related to human rights and democratic values, in the case of US sources, and North Korean sources, respectively. What is the meaning of these differences?
  5. How do you see the critical potential and the limitations of network analysis approaches in security studies? What other critical securities studies perspectives could be in a fruitful dialogue with network approaches?

Chapter 16: Predication, presupposition and subject-positioning

  1. To what extent are national identities constructed through visual and cultural discursive practices?
  2. How can predication, presupposition and subject-positioning be used to analyze a particular state leader’s authority or lack thereof?
  3. How is US national security represented in other examples of fiction?
  4. Is there a genuine tension between national security and international law?
  5. How important is the entertainment industry in shaping the public’s political views?

Chapter 17: Deconstruction as ‘anti-Method’

  1. What does an ‘anti-methodological’ approach tell us about global politics today?
  2. Why might a deconstructive approach to global politics be unsettling to some?
  3. Describe a conventional approach to ‘security’. How would you go about deconstructing this?
  4. What can an anti-foundationalist analysis of the Global Financial Crisis tell us about the context, evolution and effects of that crisis?
  5. Why is it important to deconstruct assumptions about masculinity and femininity in global politics?

Chapter 18: Visual analysis and the aesthetics of security

  1. How have aesthetic approaches broadened the field of study in IR?
  2. Using examples, explore the implications of aesthetic interventions in world politics.
  3. Are there particular problems or issues in exploring interpretive approaches to particular sources when those sources are visual images rather than written texts? What are they and how might they be overcome?
  4. How can visual images reflect ideas about security and insecurity? How might they reflect changing values as well as changing political contexts?
  5. Using the Images function on any search engine you use, find several images relating to a single conflict or problem in global politics; reflect on how they can be interpreted and how your own position as well as their specific context shapes the interpretation of them. How do they illuminate understanding of that conflict/problem? What are the limitations on what can be said about that conflict/problem using an interpretive approach?

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

  1. What does it mean to suggest that research is always from somewhere, by someone, and for some purpose?
  2. Why might academic, social or political contexts be important for research and researchers?
  3. What do you think is the role of a researcher?
  4. What ethical issues arise in the conduct of research, and how might these be mitigated?
  5. What ethical issues arise in the presentation of research, and how might these be mitigated?