Aberystwyth, Paris, Copenhagen

Since the mid-1990s, a number of theories or research programs—often called “schools”—have emerged within European security studies. Although security studies are habitually seen as a sub-field within International Relations (IR), these “schools” have not been sectorial manifestations of the main theories as defined by the “grand debates” of the discipline at large. Nor have they generally been copied from the United States. In a discipline (IR) and a sub-discipline/field (security studies) used to American “leadership,” the sudden fertility of European soil has been a surprise. The debate within, among, and across these “schools” has regularly been characterized as particularly fruitful. As noted by Mike Williams (2003: 511) among others, it is with some surprise that the discipline receives new impulses from security studies, a corner expected to represent the most reactionary and policy obsessed (of a generally reactionary and policy-obsessed discipline):

Over the past decade, the field of security studies has become one of the most dynamic and contested areas in International Relations. In particular, it has become perhaps the primary forum in which broadly social constructivist approaches have challenged traditional – largely Realist and non-Realist theories on their “home turf”, the area in which some of the most vibrant new approaches to the analysis of international politics are being developed, and the realm in which some of the most engaged theoretical debates are taking place. ²

This largely European debate went unnoticed for at least a decade in the United States. Although important contributions are emerging increasingly from both non-Western and American scholars, the emergence of these distinct theories is widely associated with places such as Aberystwyth (critical security studies), Paris (Didier Bigo’s Bourdieu-inspired work), and Copenhagen (securitization). Why in Aberystwyth, Paris and Copenhagen— why not in Amman, Philadelphia or Calcutta?