This text takes issue with arguments that security studies is a discipline of limited use in making sense of the post-Cold War world. It argues that many of the most interesting theoretical issues in international relations can most usefully be studied through a prism labelled "security studies". The book combines chapters which provide a variety of critical perspectives on the discipline and address a diverse range of theoretical concerns, with chapters that examine such substantive issues as weapons proliferation and the changing meaning of "security" for actors in the erstwhile conflict between East and West.
Part I Conceptual Debates and Approaches; Chapter 1 Contesting an Essential Concept: Reading the Dilemmas in Contemporary Security Discourse, SIMON DALBY; Chapter 2 From Strategy to Security: Foundations of Critical Security Studies, KEITH KRAUSE, MICHAEL C. WILLIAMS; Chapter 3 The Subject of Security, R. B. J. WALKER; Chapter 4 Security and Self: Reflections of a Fallen Realist, KEN BOOTH; Chapter 5 Defining Security: A Subaltern Realist Perspective, MOHAMMED AYOOB; Part II The Discourses of Security; Chapter 6 Discourses of War: Security and the Case of Yugoslavia, BEVERLY CRAWFORD, RONNIE D. LIPSCHUTZ; Chapter 7 Reimagining Security: The Metaphors of Proliferation, DAVID MUTIMER; Chapter 8 Changing Worlds of Security, KARIN M. FIERKE; Part III World Order and Regional Imperatives; Chapter 9 Between a New World Order and None: Explaining the Reemergence of the United Nations in World Politics, THOMAS RISSE-KAPPEN; Chapter 10 The Periphery as the Core: The Third World and Security Studies, AMITAV ACHARYA; Chapter 11 Critical Security Studies and Regional Insecurity: The Case of Southern Africa, KEN BOOTH, PETER VALE; Chapter 12 Conclusion: Every Month Is "Security Awareness Month", BRADLEY S. KLEIN;
