Within the International Relations discipline, the concept of security has traditionally been conceived as a ‘negative’ concept; the distinction between ‘freedom from’ (negative) and ‘freedom to’ (positive) having widely been accepted as that which gives meaning to theory and practice of security. More recently, however, a growing number of scholars (Floyd; Huysmans; Hoogensen; Roe) have sought to reflect further on the notion of positive security and its critical stance towards Realist/neo-Realist security studies. In particular, the work of Bill McSweeney has prompted a profound normative engagement wherein positive security is defined as a ‘more human’ concept that seeks to privilege ontological (identity) security concerns over more traditional (physical security) thinking. Within McSweeney’s theorizing, gender constructions are important for understanding security’s positive/negative distinction and inform the need to promote human values ‘oriented towards cooperation, inclusiveness, and the positive amelioration of international group relations, associated with female behaviour’. In this paper, my aim is to reflect further on gender’s constitution of positive/negative security and to seek to contextualize this constitution within the wider emerging literature on positive security.
