Chapter 7 Self-test questions

. What is Critical Security Studies?

An approach to security that applies critical knowledge to established orthodoxies of security studies

A specific theory of security that identifies clearly defined agents, threats, and processes

A secondary term for the Copenhagen School of Security

A study of security in which the critical importance of the state, military, and traditional security are maintained.

. Within Critical Security Studies, what is the referent object of security?

There is no specific referent point.

The state and state apparatus

The environment

The people and their collectives

. Which three questions about security does the Welsh School aim to serve as a basis for answering?

What is security? Who is to be secured? By what means?

How can the state be secure? What are the biggest security threats? How can these be overcome?

What is real? What is knowledge? What is to be done?

Who is knowledge for? How can knowledge be obtained? Who creates knowledge?

. Which of these statements is not accurately applied to Critical Security Studies?

The referent object can be objectively studied and should be considered accordingly.

The security analyst and the object of the security should not be regarded as separate.

Critical Security Studies is a post-positivist approach.

Critical Security Studies questions the epistemological principles of other approaches in Security Studies.

. According to Krause and Williams, what agenda would most likely attract scholars to the 'broad church' of security studies?

To question the referent object, to question the traditional conception of military security as paramount to the state, and to change the way in which security is studied

To address security from a positivist perspective, challenging the dominance of traditional security paradigms, and shifting academic attention to the individual as a referent point

To question the dominance of liberalism and realism in the international system, to apply critical knowledge to the security dilemma faced by states and to redress the power imbalances that lead to intra-state conflict

To account for all possible referent objects and expand the definition of security so far as to allow for a broadening of the school to encompass any agent that threatens those referent objects.

. According to Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, in what ways does the Copenhagen School's approach to Security Studies differ from that of Critical Security Studies'?

The theory and knowledge that underpin each approach are fundamentally at odds with one another. Whilst Critical Security Studies is post-structuralist and constructivist, the Copenhagen School is based on an objectivist epistemology.

Whilst Critical Security Studies regards security to be a social construction, based on the changeable ideas that form human society, the Copenhagen School disregards this epistemological approach and instead considers security as an issue to be studied objectively from a positivist approach.

Critical Security Studies regards security to be an empirically definable state, which should be studied from a positivist approach. However, the Copenhagen School views security as a socially constructed entity that denies the validity of an objective approach.

Neither Critical Security Studies nor the Copenhagen School accounts for the changing nature of society and its impact on the construction of security.

. Which of the statements below is not one of the eight themes of post-Marxist critical security theory identified by Ken Booth as being important to critical security theory?

All knowledge is a social process.

The test of theory is emancipation.

Human society is a constant and unchanging phenomenon.

Human society is its own invention.

. Which statement best describes Booth's attitude towards constructivism and post-structuralism within Critical Security Studies?

Post-structuralism provides no basis for political action, being a dangerous mix of faux radicalism, relativism, and obscurantism, whilst constructivism is an orientation to world politics rather than a specific political theory.

Constructivism offers a number of specific political theories applicable to Critical Security Studies but all of these lack the tenability required in security studies. Post-structuralist theories similarly lack the durability desired by CSS scholars.

Post-structuralism and constructivism are ill-defined theories that are better described as political orientations, applicable in vague terms but lacking the substance required by scholars in contemporary security studies.

Constructivism is too dangerous a mix of political ideologies, combining elements of radicalism and relativism. Post-structuralism is more of an orientation to world politics rather than a specific and applicable political theory.

. Which of the following is not one of the unifying principles of Critical Security Studies, as defined by Krause?

Principal actors are social constructs that are made through political practices.

Natural-science methodology is the best way to study social science, interpretive methodologies lack the coherence required for in-depth analysis.

Knowledge of the social world is not objective, as there is no divide between the social world and knowledge of that world.

The purpose of theory is not explanation in terms of generalizable causal claims, but contextual understanding and practical knowledge.

. What are the themes that make post-structuralism a different field of study?

One of the founding assumptions of Critical Security Studies is that theories about the world constitute that world and thus that theory, including security theory, has political effects. The consequence is that theory is the product of the system, and that analyses of the agent of security and the referent object is produced by its own practices.

Central to the political and critical nature of post-structural literature is the idea of fostering an ethos of democracy and an ethos of critique which is finite and attainable. It is to this end that we must strive, but one that can only be met under the conditions prescribed, that of true democracy.

A central notion of critique is to provide an answer to the problem of what it means to be critical. This invariably raises the question of revealing the interest behind knowledge claims with the goal of social change, what is accepted as the end of theory: that the practical and contextual understandings inform to whom knowledge claims serve.

Poststructuralism accepts the form and foundations for knowledge claims that dominate the security studies debate. This has brought it into confrontation with the critical studies community, having little to contribute to the understanding of the ways in which knowledge is constructed.

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