International Security Studies (ISS) has changed and diversified in many ways since 1945. This book provides the first intellectual history of the development of the subject in that period. It explains how ISS evolved from an initial concern with the strategic consequences of superpower rivalry and nuclear weapons, to its current diversity in which environmental, economic, human and other securities sit alongside military security, and in which approaches ranging from traditional Realist analysis to Feminism and Post-colonialism are in play. It sets out the driving forces that shaped debates in ISS, shows what makes ISS a single conversation across its diversity, and gives an authoritative account of debates on all the main topics within ISS. This is an unparalleled survey of the literature and institutions of ISS that will be an invaluable guide for all students and scholars of ISS, whether traditionalist, ‘new agenda’ or critical. • The first book to tell the post-1945 story of International Security Studies and offer an integrated historical sociology of the whole field • Opens the door to a long-overdue conversation about what ISS is and where it should be going • Provides a detailed institutional account of ISS in terms of its journals, departments, think tanks and funding sources

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The Evolution of International Security Studies

Much of the current literature on state failure and collapse suffers from serious conceptual flaws. It ignores the variegated types of empirical statehood that exist on the ground, it conflates the absence of a central government with anarchy, it creates an unhelpful distinction between ‘accomplished’ and ‘failed’ states, and it is guided by a teleological belief in the convergence of all nation-states. Particularly African states figure prominently in this debate and are frequently portrayed in almost pathological terms. Proposing a comparative analysis of politics in the Somali inhabited territories of the Horn of Africa, this article challenges state failure discourses on both theoretical and empirical grounds. We draw attention to the multiple processes of state-building and forms of statehood that have emerged in Somalia, and the neighbouring Somalia region of Ethiopia, since 1991. The analysis of the different trajectories of these Somali political orders reveals that state formation in Africa contradicts central tenets of the state failure debate and that external state-building interventions should recognise and engage with sub-national political entities. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Failures of the state failure debate: Evidence from the Somali territories

tion (m) was the only one who received support for their projects. Only in 1990, after Julius Nyerere had paid respect to the women's networks, pointing to how they had been keeping small business and communities alive, did this attitude change. In this review I have not attempted to describe the different struggles within each country in detail, the history of each group's internal and external conflicts, or their individualized struggles with unions, employers, spouses, and legal authorities. However, despite the odds and the obstacles, these new forms of economic organization seem to offer some grounds for optimism.

Worlding women: a feminist international politics

In 1988, Millennium published a special issue on “Women and International Relations” now widely recognized as the start of a research program of feminist approaches to International Relations (ir)....

Introduction to Security Studies: Feminist Contributions

Narratives of human security have been widely adopted and adapted within both academic and policy communities. Despite debates over its meanings and uses, the concept has proven to be remarkably resilient. In particular, there has a been a surprising willingness by critical scholars not only to analyse and critique human security, but also to embrace it as a means of furthering political goals. This article maps the ways in which various strands of critical scholarship in international relations have striven to use human security. It concludes by arguing that human security has lost any true critical potential and has become a new orthodoxy. Thus, while the concept may have value in highlighting particular issues and may enable short-term gains, it is unable to provide the basis for a substantive change of the system of international security.

Critical Voices and Human Security: To Endure, To Engage or To Critique?:

In the debate on human security, the leading question for many is ‘where do we go from here?’ Through this article, the authors contribute to the discussion by exploring both the extent to which ge

Gender, Resistance and Human Security

This paper examines the activities of non-state actors in war in Somalia and Angola. Arguing that prolonged wars are characterised by the emergence of social orders of violence beyond the state, our analytical focus is on how actors establish and sustain these orders. A core influence is the insight from research on war economies that war is not equal to the breakdown of societal order, but represents an alternative form of social order. We therefore examine the economic activities of insurgents in regard to their embeddedness in social and political spheres. The central question in this paper is how economic, political and symbolic aspects interact and determine as well as transform social orders of violence. With the examples of Somalia and Angola, two rather distinct cases of non-state orders of violence are examined. It is argued that these orders represent forms of authority with fundamental structural aspects in common. We suggest that these orders can be systematised on a continuum between two pole...

Violence & social order beyond the state: Somalia & Angola

In ongoing discussions surrounding the issue of human security, the security of individuals has become entangled in conceptual debates that are preoccupied with notions of appropriate variables, me...

Human Security Research Practices: Conceptualizing Security for Women’s Crisis Centres in Russia

Embodying a state vision of how civil society ought to function and be designed by the authorities, Public Chambers in Russia have been criticized as means of state control. This state dominance is the starting point in this article, which asks what room to manoeuvre a regional Public Chamber has. Drawing upon fieldwork this article examines how members and local observers of the Public Chamber give meaning to this activity. The analysis assesses the role of state dominance, discussion of routines and responses to local demands, and concludes that these incremental developments form civil society in Russia.

Kirsti Stuvøy

Papers

Gender, Resistance and Human Security

Violence & social order beyond the state: Somalia & Angola

Human Security Research Practices: Conceptualizing Security for Women’s Crisis Centres in Russia

Power and Public Chambers in the development of civil society in Russia

War and city-making in Somalia: Property, power and disposable lives