Security

Security is among the most highly contested issues in Political Science and IR, complicated by the taken-for-granted assumptions about security that make up so much of the discourse of our daily lives, politicking and media coverage. In the study of Politics, a mainstream view might suggest that the issue of security is paramount to our understandings of how the world works and how people relate to one another. In this view, the topics we have discussed in previous chapters, such as the state, policy, institutions etc., while the subject of vigorous debate as to their constituent features, are premised on the idea of security as necessary to protect individuals from fellow citizens, the state, foreign citizens and foreign states. However, security is a highly contested concept. Not only that; for Edward Kolodziej (2005: 1) it has the added dimension that it is ‘heavily laden with emotion and deeply held values’. Indeed, for James Der Derian ‘no other concept in international relations packs the metaphysical punch, nor commands the disciplinary power of ‘security” (Der Derian, 1995: 24–5).