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Region, Security, Regional Security: “Whose Middle East?” Revisited

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Regional Insecurity After the Arab Uprisings

Part of the book series: New Security Challenges Series ((NSECH))

Abstract

Critical security studies teaches its students that security is derivative of one’s philosophical stance (Booth, 1997, 2007; Walker, 1997), thereby rejecting the presumption that “threats” exist “out there” independent of our behaviour — including our attempts to know them (Burgess, 2011). To quote Ken Booth:

How one conceives of security is constructed out of the assumptions (however explicitly or inexplicitly articulated) that make up one’s theory of world politics (its units, structures, processes and so on). Security policy, from this perspective, is an epiphenomenon of political theory.

(Booth, 2007)

Different people, social groups and states have different ideas as to how they want to live, what they find threatening and whose security they want to pursue. When security is opened up to consider the insecurities of different referents, it becomes difficult to sustain the assumption that security is about states defending themselves against military threats that stem from outside their boundaries (Bilgin, 2002).

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Authors
  1. Pinar Bilgin
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Warwick, UK

    Elizabeth Monier

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© 2015 Pinar Bilgin

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Bilgin, P. (2015). Region, Security, Regional Security: “Whose Middle East?” Revisited. In: Monier, E. (eds) Regional Insecurity After the Arab Uprisings. New Security Challenges Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137503978_2

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