Formation/Cours

Fundamental knowledge of debates on issues of risk and uncertainty within security studies in international relations.

This course will offer an introduction to the study of risk and uncertainty through the lens of security. We will investigate how the issues of risk and uncertainty have been practically and politically entangled with security, bringing different kinds of stakeholders and experts to the field of security. Soldiers, diplomats, police officers, elected officials, but also teachers, scientists, engineers, insurers, NGO representatives, and even ordinary citizens are the actors mobilised within our societies ‘of’ and ‘at’ risk. The course will examine the effects of this international and transnational convergence between threat prevention and the management of increasingly uncertain risks in diverse domains: health, climate change, terrorism, border control, global finance, etc. It will pay particular attention to the implications of the use of technologies such as nuclear power, biometrics and AI; what kinds of knowledge are implicated; or what risk and uncertainty logic do to the idea of ‘State’ as the security provider.

SESSIONS AND READINGS

S1_Methodological and key concepts introduction

• Petersen Karen (2011), “Risk analysis – A field within security studies?”, European Journal of International Relations, 18(4): pp. 693–717.

S2_Traditional Security: Rationalist approaches

• Ikenberry John (2004), “Liberalism and empire: logics of order in the American unipolar age”, Review of International Studies, 30: pp. 609–630


• Mearsheimer John J. & Walt Stephen M. (2003), “An Unnecessary War”, Foreign Policy, Washington N° 134, (Jan/Feb 2003): pp. 50-59.

Discussion: What should be the priorities when it comes to ensuring security?

S3_ Political risk approach of security

• Beck Ulrich (2001), ‘Interview with Ulrich Beck’, Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol 1(2): pp. 261–277.


• Jarvis Darryl S. L. (2007), ‘Risk, Globalisation and the State: A Critical Appraisal of Ulrich Beck and the World Risk Society Thesis’, Global Society, Vol. 21, No 1: 23-46.

S4_ Constructivist/sociologist enlargement

• Huysmans Jef (2002), “Defining Social Constructivism in Security Studies: The Normative Dilemma of Writing Security”, Alternatives, 27: pp. 41-62.


• Waever Ole (1993): ‘Securitisation and desecuritization’, in R. Lipschutz, On Security, chapter 3.

S5_Reflexive modernity approaches

• Rasmussen Mikkel Vedby (2004), ‘It Sounds Like a Riddle’: Security Studies, the War on Terror and Risk’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2: pp. 381-395


• Giddens Anthony, 1996 : ‘’Affluence, Poverty and the Idea of a Post-Scarcity Society’, Development and Change, Vol. 27 (1996): pp. 365-377.

S6_Critical approaches

• Aradau Claudia & van Münster Rens (2008), ‘Insuring terrorism, assuring subjects, ensuring normality: The politics of risk after 9/11’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 33(2): pp. 191–210.


• Best Jaqueline (2008), ‘Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and Risk: Rethinking Indeterminacy’, International Political Sociology, No.2, pp. 355-374.

S7_Riskification of security and uncertainty

• Kessler Oliver and Daase Christopher (2008), ‘From Insecurity to Uncertainty: Risk and the Paradox of Security Politics,’ Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Apr.-June 2008, Vol. 33, No. 2: pp. 211-232.


• Corry Olaf (2012), ‘ ‘Securitisation’ and ‘Riskification’: Second-order Security and the Politics of Climate Change,’ in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 40(2): pp. 235–258.

S8_Managing Natural and human risks

• Andrabi Shazana (2022), ‘Decolonising knowledge production in disaster managem