Description
In many ways, the global coronavirus pandemic typifies the security challenges states are likely to face over the coming decade. The harms and instabilities likely to emerge from ecological crisis, global health challenges, mass migrations, global poverty, cyber insecurity and political instability will likely be transnational and planetary in nature, and escape more ‘traditional’, state-centric, militarised security paradigms.
From this analysis, it would seem that ‘critical security studies’ has a lot to contribute when it comes to responding to these challenges. Critical approaches are premised on denaturalising the state as the sole referent of security and have challenged the way liberal democracies have privileged the use of force and militarism to produce security.
Yet, while critical approaches to security have come to dominate some parts of the academy, it is not always clear what their impact on security policy has been. To assess the relevance of the insights of critical security studies to contemporary security challenges, and with a view to ensuring they do not remain consigned to the ivory tower, this roundtable brings together academics, policymaking and NGO communities to ask three key questions:
• To what extent have critical security concepts, theories or frameworks already influenced or been adopted by security policy circles?
• In what ways might critical security studies reshape policy debates when confronting the security challenges of the next decade?
• How can academics best engage in informing and producing alternative conceptions of security policy?
