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

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.

[1]  A. Escobar.  The Invention of Development , 1999, Current History.

[2]  Kyle Grayson.  Securitization and the Boomerang Debate: A Rejoinder to Liotta and Smith-Windsor , 2003 .

[3]  A. Chenoy.  A Plea for Engendering Human Security , 2005 .

[4]  R. Paris,et al.  Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air? , 2001, International Security.

[5]  J. Habermas,et al.  The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalization of Society , 1986 .

[6]  M. Denov.  Wartime Sexual Violence: Assessing a Human Security Response to War-Affected Girls in Sierra Leone , 2006 .

[7]  S. Macfarlane.  Human security and the UN , 2006 .

[8]  Gunhild Hoogensen,et al.  Gender, Resistance and Human Security , 2006 .

[9]  Miguel de Larrinaga,et al.  (Re)presenting landmines from protector to enemy: The discursive framing of a new multilateralism , 1998 .

[10]  M. Clark.  Trafficking in Persons: An issue of human security , 2003 .

[11]  G. Ikenberry,et al.  Human Security and the UN: A Critical History , 2006 .

[12]  F. C. P. Motta.  The theory of communicative action , 1991 .

[13]  The Intellectual Perils of Broad Human Security: Deepening the Critique of International Relations , 2008 .

[14]  M. Kaldor.  New and Old Wars : Organized Violence in a Global Era , 1998 .

[15]  N A Fox,et al.  Definitions and concepts of emotion regulation. Introduction. , 1994, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.

[16]  G. Maclean.  Instituting and Projecting Human Security: A Canadian Perspective , 2000 .

[17]  Oliver P. Richmond.  Emancipatory Forms of Human Security and Liberal Peacebuilding , 2007 .

[18]  M. Gervais.  Human security and reconstruction efforts in Rawanda: Impact on the lives of women , 2003 .

[19]  Lloyd Axworthy,et al.  Human Security and Global Governance: Putting People First , 2001 .

[20]  D. Milovanović.  Book Review: The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. Two, Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason , 1989 .

[21]  N. Poku,et al.  Human security and development in Africa , 2007 .

[22]  Kyle Grayson.  Human security as power/knowledge: the biopolitics of a definitional debate , 2008 .

[23]  Des Gasper,et al.  Deepening Development Ethics: From Economism to Human Development to Human Security , 2005 .

[24]  H. Slim.  Violence and Humanitarianism , 2001 .

[25]  K. Booth.  Security and Self : Reflections of a Fallen Realist , 1994 .

[26]  E. Newman.  Human Security and Constructivism , 2001 .

[27]  T. Mccormack.  Development, Security and Unending War, Governing the World of Peoples , 2008 .

[28]  Ryerson Christie.  The Human Security Dilemma , 2008 .

[29]  Keith Krause,et al.  Peace, Security and Development in Post-Conflict Environments , 2005 .

[30]  E. Conteh-Morgan.  PEACEBUILDING AND HUMAN SECURITY: A CONSTRUCTIVIST PERSPECTIVE , 2005 .

[31]  P. H. Liotta.  Boomerang Effect: the Convergence of National and Human Security , 2002 .

[32]  A. Wibben.  Human Security: Toward an Opening , 2008 .

[33]  Anna M. Agathangelou,et al.  Power, Borders, Security, Wealth: Lessons of Violence and Desire from September 11 , 2004 .

[34]  Per Stenström,et al.  Introduction to Part 1 , 2007, Trans. High Perform. Embed. Archit. Compil..

[35]  J. Reid,et al.  Global Governance, Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency , 2000 .

[36]  T. Väyrynen.  Gender and UN peace operations: The confines of modernity , 2004 .

[37]  C. Harders.  Gender and Security in the Mediterranean , 2003 .

[38]  Matt McDonald,et al.  Human Security and the Construction of Security , 2002 .

[39]  A. Suhrke.  Human Security and the Interests of States , 1999 .

[40]  T. Mccormack.  Power and agency in the human security framework , 2008 .

[41]  D. Ambrosetti.  Human Security as Political Resource: A Response to David Chandler's `Human Security: The Dog That Didn't Bark' , 2008 .

[42]  Human rights and human security: an emancipatory political project , 2004 .

[43]  V. Pupavac.  Human security and the rise of global therapeutic governance , 2005 .

[44]  Steve Smith.  Singing Our World into Existence: International Relations Theory and September 11 , 2004 .

[45]  Rhonda L. Callaway,et al.  Toward a Theory of Terrorism: Human Security as a Determinant of Terrorism , 2006 .

[46]  B. Hamber,et al.  Discourses in Transition: Re-Imagining Women's Security , 2006 .

[47]  P. Ewan.  Deepening the Human Security Debate: Beyond the Politics of Conceptual Clarification , 2007 .

[48]  Michael Clarke.  China's “War on Terror” in Xinjiang: Human Security and the Causes of Violent Uighur Separatism , 2008 .

[49]  D. Chandler.  Review Essay: Human Security: The Dog That Didn't Bark , 2008 .

[50]  R. Cox.  Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory , 1981, Culture, Ideology, and World Order.

[51]  Lloyd Axworthy.  A New Scientific Field and Policy Lens , 2004 .

[52]  Marc G. Doucet,et al.  Sovereign Power and the Biopolitics of Human Security , 2008 .

[53]  R. Paris,et al.  Still an Inscrutable Concept , 2004 .

[54]  James Busumtwi-Sam.  Development and Human Security , 2002 .

[55]  S. Maclean.  Microbes, Mad Cows and Militaries: Exploring the Links Between Health and Security , 2008 .

[56]  Keith Krause,et al.  From Strategy to Security: Foundations of Critical Security Studies , 2002 .

[57]  M. Fox.  Child soldiers and international law: Patchwork gains and conceptual debates , 2005 .

[58]  M. Duffield,et al.  Securing Humans in a Dangerous World , 2006 .

[59]  I. Ogbonna-Nwaogu.  Civil Wars in Africa: A Gender Perspective of the Cost on Women , 2008 .

[60]  M. Fox.  Girl Soldiers: Human Security and Gendered Insecurity , 2004 .

[61]  R. Carpenter.  Recognizing Gender-Based Violence Against Civilian Men and Boys in Conflict Situations , 2006 .

[62]  M. Duffield.  Getting savages to fight barbarians: development, security and the colonial present , 2005 .

[63]  J. Habermas.  The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society , 1986 .

[64]  M. Dillon.  Governing through contingency: The security of biopolitical governance☆ , 2007 .

[65]  Heidi Hudson,et al.  ‘Doing’ Security As Though Humans Matter: A Feminist Perspective on Gender and the Politics of Human Security , 2005 .

[66]  Gunhild Hoogensen,et al.  Gender Identity and the Subject of Security , 2004 .