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Critical human security studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2010

EDWARD NEWMAN
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Abstract

From a critical security studies perspective – and non-traditional security studies more broadly – is the concept of human security something which should be taken seriously? Does human security have anything significant to offer security studies? Both human security and critical security studies challenge the state-centric orthodoxy of conventional international security, based upon military defence of territory against ‘external’ threats. Both also challenge neorealist scholarship, and involve broadening and deepening the security agenda. Yet critical security studies have not engaged substantively with human security as a distinct approach to non-traditional security. This article explores the relationship between human security and critical security studies and considers why human security arguments – which privilege the individual as the referent of security analysis and seek to directly influence policy in this regard – have not made a significant impact in critical security studies. The article suggests a number of ways in which critical and human security studies might engage. In particular, it suggests that human security scholarship must go beyond its (mostly) uncritical conceptual underpinnings if it is to make a lasting impact upon security studies, and this might be envisioned as Critical Human Security Studies (CHSS).

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 77 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2010

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References

1 Critical security studies can be conceived broadly to embrace a number of different non-traditional approaches which challenge conventional (military, state-centric) approaches to security studies and security policy. Alternatively, Critical Security Studies can be conceived more narrowly, to represent a particular approach to non-traditional security studies (for example, that proposed by Ken Booth – see below). This article uses the term critical security studies in the former, general sense, unless explicitly indicated.

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3 Hampson, Madness in the Multitude, p. 12.

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12 As of 2009 membership included: Austria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Greece, Ireland, Jordan, Mali, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa (observer), Switzerland and Thailand. See {http://www.humansecuritynetwork.org/}.

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22 Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy, Human Security Concepts and Implications.

23 Ramesh Thakur and Edward Newman, ‘Introduction: Non-traditional security in Asia’, in Ramesh Thakur and Edward Newman (eds), Broadening Asia’s Security Discourse and Agenda: Political, Social, and Environmental Perspectives (Tokyo, UN University Press, 2004), p. 4.

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26 Smith, ‘The Contested Concept of Security’, p. 28.

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59 Sheehan, International Security, p. 159; Booth, ‘Beyond Critical Security Studies’, in Booth (ed.), Critical Security Studies and World Politics, p. 260.

60 Commission on Human Security.