Collaboratory in Critical Security Methods
The International Collaboratory on Critical Methods in Security Studies is an ESRC funded project (RES-810-21-0072)
Method 3: Discourses and materialities
methodological vocabulary/grammar and develop critical methods in particular contexts and sites. Some of these sites include the constitution of counter-terrorism through the governance of crowded places and through (de)listing of so-called terrorist suspects, the constitution of subjectivity in contemporary border and human (in)security practices. We also explore the role of materiality in the constitution of subjectivity, in the circulation of knowledge, and the relationality of scales and spaces. More
Rabinow (2003) Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment
Rabinow, Paul (2003) Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
The discipline of anthropology is, at its best, characterized by turbulence, self-examination, and inventiveness. In recent decades, new thinking and practice within the field has certainly reflected this pattern, as shown for example by numerous fruitful ventures into the "politics and poetics" of anthropology.
Norton (2003) 95 Theses on Politics, Culture, and Method
Norton, Anne (2003) 95 Theses on Politics, Culture, and Method (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, he offered a challenge to the dominant establishment of which he was a member. In this provocative book, political scientist Anne Norton proposes 95 theses that launch a brilliant, witty polemic against the reigning orthodoxies in her own field.
Alker (1996) Rediscoveries and Reformulations Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies
Alker, Hayward (1996), Rediscoveries and Reformulations Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
This book provides a distinctive and rich conception of methodology within international studies. From a rereading of the works of leading Western thinkers about international studies, Hayward Alker rediscovers a 'neo-Classical' conception of international relations which is both humanistic and scientific. He draws on the work of classical authors such as Aristotle and Thucydides; modern writers like Machiavelli, Vico, Marx, Weber, Deutsch and Bull; and post-modern writers like Havel, Connolly and Toulmin.
Aradau (2010) Security that matters: critical infrastructure and objects of protection
Aradau, Claudia (2010), 'Security that matters: critical infrastructure and objects of protection', Security Dialogue vol. 41(5): 491-514.
Critical infrastructure protection is prominently concerned with objects that appear indispensable for the functioning of social and political life. However, the analysis of material objects in discussions of critical infrastructure protection has remained largely within the remit of managerial responses, which see matter as simply passive, a blank slate. In security studies, critical approaches have focused on social and cultural values, forms of life, technologies of risk or structures of neoliberal globalization.
Ackerly, Stern and True (2006) Feminist Methodologies for International Relations
Ackerly, Brooke A., Stern, Maria, True, Jacqui (2006), Feminist Methodologies for International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Why is feminist research carried out in international relations (IR)? What are the methodologies and methods that have been developed in order to carry out this research? Feminist Methodologies for International Relations offers students and scholars of IR, feminism, and global politics practical insight into the innovative methodologies and methods that have been developed – or adapted from other disciplinary contexts – in order to do feminist research for IR.
Clough (2010) The Case of Sociology: Governmentality and Methodology
Patricia Ticineto Clough (2010), The Case of Sociology: Governmentality and Methodology, Critical Inquiry vol. 36 no. 4: 627-641.
This article discusses the contributions to a special issue 'On the case' in Critical Inquiry. It sh argues that qualitative methodology in sociology can produce untimely political effects. The author encourages the further development of ways to think across the methodologies of sociology and critical theory and cultural criticism in order to address governance while giving freer rein to the indeterminacy of the in-between of the exceptional and the unexceptional ordinary.
Glynos and Howarth (2007) Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory
Glynos, Jason and Howarth, David (2007), "Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory", London, New York: Routledge.
In their book, Jason Glynos and David Howarth propose to practice social and political analysis based on the role of logics. While drawing upon hermeneutics, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, and post-analytical philosophy, they elaborate an alternative grammar of concepts informed predominantly by an ontological stance rooted in poststructuralist theory (and in particular, in the Essex School of Discourse Theory).
Laclau and Mouffe (1987) Postmarxism without apologies
Laclau, Ernesto and Mouffe, Chantal (1987), "Postmarxism without Apologies". In: New Left Review, Vol. 166, pp. 79-106.
In this article, Laclau & Mouffe respond to their critics. After the publication of "Hegemony and Socialist Strategy" in 1985 a number of scholars have criticized their rethinking of the socialist project. One of the main ciriticism has been levelled against Laclau & Mouffe's conception of discourse. What today seems to be a defendable and accepted position, i.e. that objects are above all discursively constructed and that they only become meaningful via discourse, sparked major criticism at that time.
Bennett (2005) The Agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout
Bennett, Jane (2005), "The Agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout". In: Public Culture, 17(3), pp. 445–65.
The article uses the concept of assemblage to to highlight the conceptual and empirical inadequacy of human-centered notions of agency and to investigate some of the practical implications, for social scientific inquiry and for politics, of a notion of agency that crosses the human-nonhuman divide. It uses the electrical power grid and an account of the blackout that struck North America in August 2003 to discuss a materialist ontology.
Barad (1998) Getting Real: Technoscientific Practices and the Materialization of Reality
Barad, Karen (1998), "Getting Real: Technoscientific Practices and the Materialization of Reality". In: Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Vol. 10, no. 2, pp 87-128
In this article, Karen Barad examines the relation between the material and the discursive more generally by considering the piezoelectric crystal as a material instrument. A more robust understanding of materialism, as developed in Barad's theory of agential realism, enables feminists and other liberatory theorists to take account of the ways in which "matter comes to matter", including the active role of material constraints and conditions within a theoretical framework that acknowledges poststructuralism and Marxist insights exploring matter's multiple modes of 'mediation'.