ABSTRACT
Critical security studies are frequently considered as a project of gaining distance to the discourses of policy and its practitioners. Such a mode of (dis) engagement underlying much of critical security studies arguably can be traced back to early disciplinary formulations in international relations of what it means to do critical research. Robert Cox introduced an influential understanding of ‘critical’ by suggesting a classification of two types of theory: critical theory and problemsolving theory. In Cox’s formulation problem-solving theory ‘takes the world as it finds it’ (Cox 1981: 130), while critical theory ‘is critical in the sense that it stands apart from the prevailing order of the world’ (Cox 1981: 130). Cox’s delineation of two types of theories became remarkably influential in international relations as well as in security studies not the least since the distinction was immediately apprehended by scholars such as Kenneth Waltz (1986). Waltz regarded the distinction to be a ‘nice’ one, and laconically responded that ‘Cox would transcend the world as it is, meanwhile we have to live in it’ (Waltz 1986: 338). In his understanding, ‘Critical theory seeks to interpret the world historically and philosophically. Problem-solving theory seeks to understand and explain it’ (Waltz 1986: 341). Whether Waltz had misunderstood Cox’s distinction or not – it is likely he had – critical theorizing has become understood as a detached practice of historicizing and intellectualizing. Here, scholarship gains its worth through distance: the good critical scholar engages in philosophical reasoning, large-scale histories and genealogies and seeks distance from security practitioners and the processes of making security.
