CfP: Critical Security Studies meets Critical Policy Studies: New Perspectives on Politics, Knowledge, and Security

· by · in

Call for Papers

for the panel titled Critical Security Studies meets Critical Policy Studies: New Perspectives on Politics, Knowledge, and Security at the European Consortium for Political Research – ECPR General Conference on September 7 – 10, 2016 in Prague.

Critical security studies and Critical policy studies have both became increasingly popular research agendas in the recent years. While both have distinct disciplinary history and evolved through separate trajectories, they have recently shared an interest in studying many similar issues. International migration, climate change and its consequences, blurring of public/private divide in contemporary governance, or generally the role of experts and professionals in the formation and practical outcomes of specific policies represent just a small fraction of the overlap of both research areas. Similarly, both traditions have sought to appropriate and further develop insights from anthropology, science and technology studies, political sociology, or gender studies. Interestingly, however, the debate between the two is virtually non-existent.
Therefore, this panel seeks to open the dialogue between Critical security studies and Critical policy. We believe that there are certain issues that seems to be missing from the agenda of either Critical policy studies or Critical security studies. The deliberative dimension of security policies and issues of science and expertise in the policy-making processes could be an example out of many.  We are interested in papers that investigate the following broad issues, both in the context of specific empirical applications and theoretical arguments.

In particular, we welcome papers that would focus on these issues in the Central and Eastern European countries.

  • CPS meets CSS: Is there something exceptional about security policy or could it be analyzed and criticized by theories and tools developed within the Critical policy studies?
  • CSS meets CPS: What can the notoriously secretive nature of national security policy tell us about policy-making in general?
  • The Critical in CPS and CSS: What kind of critique can current approaches in the CPS and CSS offer?
  • Security as politics: What happens when we look at security policy as deliberated through standard political processes, as opposed to standard framing through the politics of exception? Where can we find politics in the process of security policy-making?
  • Security rationalities sweeping to other policy areas: What impact does the securitization of e.g. science or health issues has on the practice of these policy-areas? What other areas have witnessed increasing securitization?
  • Traveling of expertise, knowledge and governance innovations between policy areas: Risk analysis, governance by algorithms and the impact of big data – how and with what rationales they travel and get appropriated from/to security policy or other policy areas?

If you want your paper to be considered on the panel, please send the title of the proposed paper and an abstract of no more than 500 words to Dagmar Rychnovská (rychnovska@fsv.cuni.cz) and Jan Daniel (daniel@iir.cz) by 14 February 2016. Accepted paper proposals will then have to be officially submitted via MyECPR account by 15 February 2016.