ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines feminist and postcolonial approaches to Security Studies (SS) and key examples of security-as-practice in order to illustrate that both are fundamentally gendered and racialized. SS emerged as a subfield of International Relations during the Cold War period, dominated largely by realist understandings of the world. The chapter sets out some of the core concerns and assumptions of dominant mainstream approaches to SS, tracing the logics that underscore these approaches. It also sets out how feminist and postcolonial scholars have analysed and contested dominant meanings of 'security' and key events related to the concerns of SS. Gender and race are necessary for thinking about the core issues in SS, for analysing events and phenomena related to 'security'. The chapter draws on contemporary examples to illustrate how 'security' is inextricably linked to broader dominant discourses, and demonstrates how the gendered and racialized logics of 'security' function in practice.
