ABSTRACT
What, then, are the fundamentals of society that require change to produce a progressive politics? Marx’s answer was that society is fundamentally about the production of the essentials (and when that is achieved, the frivolities) of life. Political identity is determined by the individual’s relation to the production process (their social class). Those who own the means of production in any society benefit at the expense of others, and so the ‘point’ is to reveal this fundamental organization of society, to mobilize the oppressed to change the society in their interest. However, what if society is not fundamentally about production in the way Marx suggests? What if the various identities produced in activities other than production are not subordinate to their class identity? Indeed, perhaps there is no single fundamental nature to social organization in all times and in all places, but rather the various forms of social activity and identity organize differently, contingently at different times and in different places, and so progressive social change must look to multiple sites of fundamental oppression. As industrial capitalism grew and became globalized, and particularly as capitalism became post-industrial, a body of social theory grew that made just such a claim. What I have sketched, in admittedly a very schematic way, is the broad scope of cri-
tical social theory and its primary line of division. Those who follow Marx’s theory of a fundamentally class-based society are found on one side of this division. This stream is often termed ‘German’, in that Marx and a good number of those that followed him were either German or based in Germany – most notably, in the twentieth century, a group of theorists gathered in Frankfurt (the ‘Frankfurt School’), who coined the term Critical Theory. On the other side are those who argue that class and production are not fundamental. This second stream is often termed ‘French’ for the influence of a number of French thinkers in a tradition also usually labelled ‘post-structural’. Foremost among these are Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. There are, of course, near infinite complexities within these broad areas of social theory, and considerable overlap at their margins. No post-structural thinker, for example, would reject the importance of the basic Marxist critique of capitalist society to understanding (and changing) the present. However, there is a significant stream of post-Marxist thinking that takes culture and ideology very seriously indeed. My objective in this chapter is to explore what has happened as critical social theory, in its many varieties, has been turned on the questions of international security to forge a field of study generally termed Critical Security Studies. I begin with a short discussion of the origins of Critical Security Studies, as it emerged in
the aftermath of the collapse of the Cold War and in response to the problems that collapse revealed with traditional security studies. Initially, the leading theoretical position identified with the term critical security was constructivism, and so I follow the discussion of origins with a short exploration of the literature on social construction. There is a real question, however, as to whether the constructivist position fits with a commitment to critical social theory, and so that section is followed by two that explore the deployment of first post-Marxist and then post-structural social theory to questions of security. I conclude by considering a recent attempt to bridge the divisions I sketch in the rest of the chapter, revealing in the process some of the ways that some divisions appear inescapable.
Security Studies was, in its inception and early practice, very much a ‘policy science’. It grew along with the nuclear age, operating under the shadow of a future nuclear war,
with the avowed commitment to prevent it if possible, and win it if necessary. The concern of Security Studies was, in the words of one of its staunchest defenders, ‘the study of the threat, use and control of military force’ (Walt 1991). It was concerned with interpreting the world of military strategy, not to change it fundamentally, but to make it better on its own terms. Providing direct policy advice to those in control of states’ militaries, particularly to nuclear-armed militaries, was very much a part of the Security Studies understanding of its purpose. Furthermore, the depth of that future shadow, and the degree to which it represented a ‘clear and present danger’, served as a strong barrier to any alteration in the study of security. By the late 1980s, however, it seemed that a change in the nuclear standoff between
East and West was in the offing. Mikhail Gorbachev was making a raft of changes to Soviet policy, both domestic and foreign, including offering truly significant nuclear arms reductions (Gorbachev 1987). The end of the Cold War opened what has been termed a ‘thinking space’ in the study of global security (George 1994). In large part, this thinking space resulted from the manifest failure of political realism, the theory underpinning traditional Security Studies, to not only predict the end of the Cold War, but also even to account for it once it had happened (Gusterson 1999). That failure created conditions in which self-consciously critical work to questions of security could be taken seriously in the academy. What has come to be known as Critical Security Studies grew from this moment in
political and intellectual time. The term itself emerged on the margins of a conference held at York University in 1994, and served as the title for the volume produced by that conference. That book, Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases, is still seen as an important point of origin of the Critical Security Studies idea. The book and label, however, really served as a point around which a number of strands of intellectual development could coalesce. A group of graduate students working with Ken Booth at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth were bringing post-Marxist critical theory to bear on questions of security (Booth 2007: xv-xvi). A number of other scholars, mainly at the University of Minnesota and York University, were developing ideas about constructivism in relation to security (Latham 1998; Mutimer 1998; Williams 1992, 1998; Milliken 2001; Price 1997; Weldes 1999). In other places, ideas drawn from French social theory were also being turned to questions of security (Campbell 1992; Dalby 1990). At the same time, there were at least two other strands of thought that drew on forms
of social critique to think about security, but which have not subsequently been captured, by and large, by the ‘Critical Security Studies’ label. The first is variously known as ‘the Copenhagen School’ or ‘securitization studies’. (See Chapter 5 in this volume). Perhaps more interestingly, many scholars were thinking about gender and international relations, including international security (Enloe 1983; Peterson 1992; Sylvester 1994; Whitworth 1998). The Feminist IR scholarship that has grown from this strand of thinking, despite significant overlaps with the work of Critical Security Studies, and severe theoretical divisions within it, continues to exist outside the ambit of Critical Security Studies.
