Gender and Critical Security Studies

Abstract

Gender approaches have increasingly come to be recognised as powerful critiques of traditional Security Studies scholarship; in terms of revealing the profoundly gendered assumptions about the nature of the individual, the state and the international system, and what this means for understanding and practicing international relations. In this way, gender scholarship has successfully managed to establish itself as part of the so-called ‘critical turn’ in International Relations. However, the theory and practice of international security very much remains a predominantly masculine endeavour, and within Critical Security Studies (CSS) itself gender scholarship has often struggled to establish itself equally alongside other approaches: the so-called C.A.S.E Collective’s manifesto for Critical Security Studies in Europe largely neglects gender altogether. The purpose of this panel is thus two-fold: to invite contributions which: one, reflect on the current status of gender scholarship within CSS (how it challenges, and is challenged by, CSS; the ongoing question of relevance); and two, seek to promote questions of gender within existing critical approaches to the theory and practice of security. Of interest are issues such as the role of the military, war, human security, and the role of masculinity in different IR contexts.

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