Research Methods in Critical Security Studies: An Introduction

Front Cover
Mark B. Salter, Can E. Mutlu
Routledge, Apr 3, 2013 - Political Science - 256 pages

This new textbook surveys new and emergent methods for doing research in critical security studies, thereby filling a large gap in the literature of this emerging field.

New or critical security studies is growing as a field, but still lacks a clear methodology; the diverse range of the main foci of study (culture, practices, language, or bodies) means that there is little coherence or conversation between these four schools or approaches.

In this ground-breaking collection of fresh and emergent voices, new methods in critical security studies are explored from multiple perspectives, providing practical examples of successful research design and methodologies. Drawing upon their own experiences and projects, thirty-three authors address the following turns over the course of six comprehensive sections:

  • Part I: Research Design
  • Part II: The Ethnographic Turn
  • Part III: The Practice Turn
  • Part IV: The Discursive Turn
  • Part V: The Corporeal Turn
  • Part VI: The Material Turn

This book will be essential reading for upper-level students and researchers in the field of critical security studies, and of much interest to students of sociology, ethnography and IR.

 

Contents

List of illustrations
Introduction
Wondering as research attitude
Criticality
Attuning to mess
King Lear and critical security studies
Introduction
Travelling with ethnography
Introduction
Archives
Legislative practices
Medicine and the psy disciplines
Speech act theory
Introduction
Affect at the airport
Emotional optics

Reflexive inquiry
Learning by feeling
How participant observation contributes to the study of insecurity practices
Dissident sexualities and the state
Introduction
socialization as method
Act different think dispositif
Expertise in the aviation security field
notes on being an effective gadfly
approaching the field in Aamjiwnaang
Theorizing the body in
Corporeal migration
Introduction
Infrastructure
The Internet as evocative infrastructure
targeted killing as military strategy
analyzing nonlethal weapons
Copyright

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About the author (2013)

Mark B. Salter is Professor at the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada. He is editor of Mapping Transatlantic Security Relations (Routledge 2010), and author of Rights of Passage: The Passport in International Relations (2003) and Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations (2002).

Can E. Mutlu is a PhD candidate (ABD) at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is the Communications Director of the International Political Sociology Section of the International Studies Association (IPS-ISA).

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