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In this article, I explore how pride as a collective emotion is ontologically bound to the securitisation of energy and put forward an innovative method that engages materiality and discourse in securitisation theory. I examine the case of energy securitisation in Azerbaijan to show that collective pride is anchored to materialisations and reiterative identity discourses that stick to energy sites and align with the nation in ways that fit with the coercive and controlling nature of securitisation. While the existing literature on emotions and securitisation engages with the process of threat construction and focuses on the audience's affective experience, I approach securitisation as threat construction and threat management and locate the affective dimension of the process in a transversal space that considers the affective experience of the audience alongside that of the securitising actor. This article pays considerable attention to methods and introduces an experimental new materialist discourse analysis, which accounts for the material, affective and non-human world exerting an agential force on the texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Securitization theory has paid extensive attention to transnational issues, actors, and processes. Surprisingly, however, only little attention has been paid to the securitization of diaspora communities, defined as overseas citizens or co-nationals abroad. This article fills this gap by developing an analytical framework to study the securitization of diasporas, focusing on three discursive formations: diasporas as threatening actors, as objects under threat, or as security resources. Building upon the recent literature on state–diaspora engagement and drawing on an analysis of Israeli elite discourse (from 1948 to 2022), this article demonstrates how the securitization of diasporas serves as a discursive mechanism that naturalizes and legitimizes extra-territorial policies towards Jews abroad. Thus, the article complements structural and rational explanations of state–diaspora engagement by examining the intersubjective process that endows diaspora policymaking with meaning. Against the backdrop of extensive securitization scholarship that focuses on attempts to keep "foreigners" out, this article shows how securitization justifies bringing certain people in or governing their national identity abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Critical security studies’ has come to occupy a prominent place within the lexicon of International Relations and security studies over the past two decades. While disagreement exists about the boundaries of this sub-discipline or indeed some of its central commitments, in this article we argue that we can indeed talk about a ‘critical security studies’ project orienting around three central themes. The first is a fundamental critique of traditional (realist) approaches to security; the second is a concern with the politics of security — the question of what security does politically; while the third is with the ethics of security — the question of what progressive practices look like regarding security. We suggest that it is the latter two of these concerns with the politics and ethics of security that ultimately define the ‘critical security studies’ project. Taking the so-called Welsh School and Copenhagen School frameworks as archetypal examples of ‘critical security studies’ (and its limits), in this article we argue that despite its promises, scholarship in this tradition has generally fallen short of providing us with a sophisticated, convincing account of either the politics or the ethics of security. At stake in the failure to provide such an account is the fundamental question of whether we need a ‘critical security studies’ at all. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article uses an analysis of the securitization of HIV/AIDS as a basis for proposing three contributions to securitization theory. Beginning with an examination of some of the key debates which have taken place between the Copenhagen School and its critics, the article goes on to argue that the process of securitizing HIV/AIDS was in fact significantly more complex than has been generally recognized and, crucially, that a more nuanced reading of this case highlights a number of issues that are not well captured by the existing securitization theory literature. The first is that securitization can be a multi-level process, with distinct securitizing actors and audiences at each level. The second is that securitization can best be understood as a continuum rather than a binary condition, and that different members of an audience may place an issue at varying points along this spectrum. The third contribution we seek to make is an intervention in the debate over the role of empirical evidence in securitization, suggesting that claims about ‘empirical reality’ form a crucial part of securitizing speech acts, but that where doubts subsequently arise over the evidence for this ‘reality’, securitization can be undermined, a dynamic that we show in practice in the HIV/AIDS case. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The academic environments of risk analysis and security studies had hardly ‘spoken’ to one another until recently. The two fields of study were defined within different academic disciplines: security studies a matter for International Relations (IR), and risk studies a matter for sociology, economics and the natural sciences. Increased focus on catastrophic events (terrorism, climate change, etc.) seems to have given the fields of security studies and risk analysis a common empirical theme and highlighted the need for a common research agenda. This article explores the intersection between these two fields of study, as it investigates how the ‘old’ disciplinary debates on risk have been translated ‘into’ security studies — to predict, criticize or evaluate the current political practice of security. Such analysis provides a much-needed overview of the risk debates within security studies and brings out the limits of this debate in light of the broader and much more historically settled risk debates within sociology, economics and anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Those interested in the construction of security in contemporary international politics have increasingly turned to the conceptual framework of 'securitization'. This article argues that while an important and innovative contribution, the securitization framework is problematically narrow in three senses. First, the form of act constructing security is defined narrowly, with the focus on the speech of dominant actors. Second, the context of the act is defined narrowly, with the focus only on the moment of intervention. Finally, the framework of securitization is narrow in the sense that the nature of the act is defined solely in terms of the designation of threats. In outlining this critique, the article points to possibilities for developing the framework further as well as for the need for those applying it to recognize both limits of their claims and the normative implications of their analysis. I conclude by pointing to how the framework might fit within a research agenda concerned with the broader construction of security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convincing research programmes often use a variety of data from cases in different contexts; in order to reach a wider understanding, the models and hypothesis of securitization studies have to be applied to broad groups of cases. The research programme of securitization studies is formed around the leading idea of securitization being a social process achieved through speech acts. I argue that by explicating the concept of securitization through illocutionary logic, it can be utilized to study security politics in non-democratic contexts in addition to the favoured liberal democratic one, where the majority of empirical analysis has been conducted so far. In addition, I present clarifications to the concepts of 'audiences' and 'special politics' used in the theory. The theoretical discussion is illustrated with examples from the Chinese political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important and controversial contributions to a vibrant body of new security theories since the 1990s has been the idea of securitization. However, rather than providing a consolidated position the discourse on securitization has only just begun to transform the new idea into a more comprehensive security theory. This article argues that such a theory needs to go beyond the current reflections on securitization by the Copenhagen School. Through internal critique and conceptual reconstruction the article generates an alternative framework for future empirical research and identifies two centres of gravity as a first step towards a more consistent understanding of securitization as a comprehensive theory of security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The events of 9/11 appeared to make good on Ulrich Beck's claim that we are now living in a (global) risk society. Examining what it means to ‘govern through risk’, this article departs from Beck's thesis of risk society and its appropriation in security studies. Arguing that the risk society thesis problematically views risk within a macro-sociological narrative of modernity, this article shows, based on a Foucauldian account of governmentality, that governing terrorism through risk involves a permanent adjustment of traditional forms of risk management in light of the double infinity of catastrophic consequences and the incalculability of the risk of terrorism. Deploying the Foucauldian notion of ‘dispositif’, this article explores precautionary risk and risk analysis as conceptual tools that can shed light on the heterogeneous practices that are defined as the ‘war on terror’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prime claim of the theory of securitization is that the articulation of security produces a specific threatening state of affairs. Within this theory, power is derived from the use of `appropriate' words in conformity with established rules governing speech acts. I argue, however, that a speech act view of security does not provide adequate grounding upon which to examine security practices in `real situations'. For instance, many security utterances counter the `rule of sincerity' and, the intrinsic power attributed to `security' overlooks the objective context in which security agents are situated. As a corrective, I put forward three basic assumptions — (i) that an effective securitization is audience-centered; (ii) that securitization is context-dependent; (iii) that an effective securitization is power-laden. The insights gleaned from the investigation of these assumptions are progressively integrated into the pragmatic act of security, the value of which is to provide researchers in the field with a tractable number of variables to investigate in order to gain a better understanding of the linguistic manufacture of threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]