Course overview
Dominant approaches to security studies are state-centric and West-centric. Realist, liberal, and conventional constructivist, feminist and human security approaches prioritise the state as the relevant political agent and draw on Western political theories that are derived from dominant forms of Enlightenment thought which are imperialistic, racist, and patriarchal. This course provides an opportunity for the comparative study of security-seeking as it is practiced by social movements around the world. After exploring critiques of security studies in their dominant conceptualisations, the course proceeds to investigate how global social movements have reconceptualised dominant political categories and mobilised them in political action to contest oppressive paradigms and structures. We will look comparatively at a range of struggles including those organised around religion, class, race, caste, indigeneity, gender, and sexuality to interrogate how they conceptualise the conditions of oppression, and reframe and operationalise a different set of categories, concepts and norms to contest, disrupt and resist.