Bridging Aberystwyth and Copenhagen: (de)securitising Emancipation (Paperback)

In the 1980s and 1990s, traditional (military-centric, state-centric and objectivist) conceptions of security were challenged by a number of new approaches which stressed, inter alia, a widened security concept, non-military and non-state perspectives, and an emphasis on culture, identity, gender and discourse. One of the more influential of these new approaches was the so called "Welsh School" of Critical Security Studies, often associated with the writings of Ken Booth and his colleagues at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, however, few serious efforts were made to further develop its central concept of "security as emancipation" or identify the best way to ?do? Critical Security Studies as a practitioner or analyst. In this study, Ola Sohlstrom presents an overview of the most central developments in security studies in the last 20 years and shows how the theory and politics of the Welsh School can be taken forward through a closer engagement with another influential post-traditionalist school of security studies, the so called Copenhagen School, and the social constructivist notion of "securitisation".