Ethics and critical security studies

Abstract

Ethical and normative concerns are central to critical security studies. While hardly constituting a coherent intellectual project, theorists working in this broad tradition generally ground their analyses in a critique of traditional security conceptions and practices in international relations. This chapter outlines both the key contours of critical security studies scholarship broadly and the unifying features of this approach. It illustrates key axes of difference and contestation through a more specific focus on those who endorse emancipation and those who approach the study of security through the securitisation framework. The chapter presents the ethical assumptions underpinning these approaches and key points of both agreement and disagreement regarding their vision of the relationship between ethics and security. It suggests that different visions of the politics of security are central to this distinction. The chapter reflects on how this discussion contributes to broader normative political theory.