ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER TEORİLERİ II

According to Johan Galtung, who is the most prominent representative of Peace Studies, the biggest, the most important and the most durable threat to the survival of human beings is the social structure in which they face extensive injustices and deprivation.

Aberystwyth School analyses the traditional security conception and seeks to examine the involvement of current structures and practices in continuation of repression, inequality and injustice in world politics.

The term of critical security studies is occasionally used to describe all perspectives which criticizes the traditional security conception.

The most important characteristics of Aberystwyth School can be summarized as follows: 1. Addressing the security as derivative concept, 2. Claim for necessity of widening of security agenda, 3. Privileging of individual as the referent object of security, 4. Regarding security problematique in the context of emancipation concept, 5. Considering the threats in a socially constructed manner, 6. Examining the relationships between self and other.

Ken Booth, Richard Wyn Jones, Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams have made crucial contributions to the development process of Aberystwyth School through their studies on security concept.

Critical security studies emerged as a reaction to the problem-solving theories in Security Studies subfield.

For Robert Cox who introduced his critiques to dominant theories of international relations with a Gramscian perspective, “theory is always for someone and for some purposes”

For Aberystwyth School, knowledge is produced socially and politically.

The human security conception’s emphasis on (1) the need of broadening of security agenda, (2) the connection between freedom and security and (3) prioritizing of individual instead of the state can be considered as main common points with critical security studies.

Emancipation needs to be understood in a way that security should be ensured by considering the needs of others, not at the expense of them.

The debates on the meaning and nature of security have largely intensified among the scholars of International Relations discipline since the end of the Cold War. In the last couple of decades, new security conceptions and theories have emerged, and they are called as “critical security studies”. The answer is C.

Critical security studies are inspired from the Peace Studies that has started to focus on “positive peace” concept in addition to “negative peace” since the 1980s. The answer is A.

Critical security studies emerged firstly with the article of “Security and Emancipation” written by Ken Booth in 1991, and then Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases edited by Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams in 1997 helped the development process of it. The most important characteristics of Aberystwyth School can be summarized as follows: 

1. Addressing the security as derivative concept, 

2. Claim for necessity of widening of security agenda,

3. Privileging of individual as the referent object of security,

4. Regarding security problematique in the context of emancipation concept, 

5. Considering the threats in a socially constructed manner, 

6. Examining the relationships between self and other.

The answer is E.

The most obvious point over which Frankfurt School and Marxism converge is the human-centred security approach. Since the state is regarded as a tool of duration of sovereign class hegemony in Marxist theory, it is stated that it is an important misconception to comprehend state-centric security policies as part of pervasive protectionist policies for the sake of society. That is why, for Marxism, the real threats that individuals and society face are emanated from an unequal system based on material interests, not from obvious enmities. The answer is A.

For Aberystwyth School, priority is not about how security will be ensured, but the sources of security issues. Hence, it is not sufficient to undertake security as a negative security situation. The answer is C.

Many threats to individual security include environmental degradation, socio-economic problems, ethnic conflict, disease, poverty, political repression, human rights violations and organized crime rather than military powers of other states. The answer is D.

Since the state is perceived as the provider of security of its citizens, it has become the dominant referent object of security within the competitive and conflictual structure of sovereign state system. Therefore, state-centric traditional security conception has tended to ignore the cruciality of non-state actors in its theoretical and conceptual frameworks for a long time. As a result of this attitude, the effects of sub-state actors on state behaviors and choices have to remain highly limited within national and international arenas. The answer is B.

Aberystwyth School claims that a theory should be there for the ‘voiceless, the unrepresented and the powerless’ (Jones, 1999: 159). In this context, Aberystwyth School states that it should be focused on the needs and interests of most ‘vulnerable’ ones instead of concerns of state security. The answer is D.

It is claimed that social contract theory would emancipate the individual from state of nature conditions in which all is against all. In this context, critical theory can be viewed as a rediscovery of modernization theory’s emancipatory attempt. However, in contrast to military-based, statecentric and zero-sum game logic of traditional security conception produced by modernism, Aberystwyth School regards the human
emancipation as the main research agenda. The answer is C.

Through European Security Strategy of 2003, the EU has launched an initiative to integrate the human security concept with the Union’s foreign and security policy. Moreover, some states such as Canada, Norway and Japan have become the leading countries for promotion of growing importance of human security conception for world security. The answer is A.