Theory/Practice in Critical Approaches to Security: An Opening for Dialogue?
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REVIEW ESSAY Theory/Practice in Critical Approaches to Security: An Opening for Dialogue? PINAR BILGIN Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, eds., Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 462, $69.95 Hardcover, $22.95 Softcover; Bill McSweeney. Security, Identity and Interests: A Sociology of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 239, $54.95 Hardcover, $19.95 Softcover; Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson, and Raymond Duvall, eds., Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 432., $57.95 Hardcover, $22.95 Softcover; Richard Wyn Jones, Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), pp. 191,$49.95 Hardcover. Introduction The issue of the relationship between theory and practice has busied the minds of students of International Relations for a long time. The question of whether academics should produce knowledge to inform policy-making or whether they could engage in scholarly activity for its own sake has recently been put to the proponents of critical approaches to International Relations who have labelled the products of those scholars that address policy debates as "problem-solving theory." I For, from a critical perspective, the role of theory is one of standing back from the day-to-day agenda and concerns of policy-makers and presenting a critique, pointing to the processes through which policy agendas are constructed, options are defined and choices are made. The four books under consideration here share an interest in producing such critique. Informed by constructivist approaches (Adler and Barnett, Weldes, et al.), sociology (McSweeney) and Frankfurt School critical theory (Wyn Jones), the authors present trenchant critiques of mainstream approaches to security and seek to move beyond them. For example, Adler and Barnett's volume seeks to contribute to the creation of security communities worldwide by enhancing our understanding of the processes through which they are constructed. McSweeney emphasises the constitutive relationship between security, identity and interests in an attempt to recover room for moral intervention in security policy-making, while Wyn Jones explores the contribution Frankfurt School critical theory could make to help anchor the theory and practice of security in a concern with human emancipation. Weldes, et al., on the
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other hand, investigate the cultural production of insecurity, or the ways in which insecurity is a product of communities, be that the community of security experts or that of Internet users. Although few would contest the value of such a critique for "academic" purposes, some remain unconvinced of its usefulness for informing practice. It has indeed been argued that students of world politics should seek to influence day-to-day policymaking and "speak truth to power" instead of indulging themselves in abstract theoretical
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