International Security Studies (ISS) has changed and diversified in many ways since 1945. This book provides the first intellectual history of the development of the subject in that period. It explains how ISS evolved from an initial concern with the strategic consequences of superpower rivalry and nuclear weapons, to its current diversity in which environmental, economic, human and other securities sit alongside military security, and in which approaches ranging from traditional Realist analysis to Feminism and Post-colonialism are in play.
It sets out the driving forces that shaped debates in ISS, shows what makes ISS a single conversation across its diversity, and gives an authoritative account of debates on all the main topics within ISS. This is an unparalleled survey of the literature and institutions of ISS that will be an invaluable guide for all students and scholars of ISS, whether traditionalist, 'new agenda' or critical.
Features:
- The first book to tell the post-1945 story of International Security Studies and offer an integrated historical sociology of the whole field
- Opens the door to a long-overdue conversation about what ISS is and where it should be going
- Provides a detailed institutional account of ISS in terms of its journals, departments, think tanks and funding sources
About the Authors
Barry Buzan is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Honorary Professor at the Universities of Copenhagen and Jilin. His books include:
The United States and the Great Powers: World Politics in the Twenty-First Century (2004);
Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (2003, with Ole Wæver);
The Arms Dynamic in World Politics (1998, with Eric Herring);
Security: A New Framework for Analysis (1998, with Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde);
People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations (1991) and
An Introduction to Strategic Studies: Military Technology and International Relations (1987).
Lene Hansen is an Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. She is the author of
Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (2006) and the co-editor of
European Integration and National Identity: The Challenge of the Nordic States (2002, with Ole Wæver).
Industry Reviews
'This is a volume that will provoke enormous debate wherever international security is researched and taught, and is sure to become a keynote contribution to the literature.'
Stuart Croft, Professor of International Security, Warwick University
'The Evolution of International Security Studies takes an amazing intellectual journey around the rich, variegated and sometimes surprising stories about security that IR - all of it! - tells. An astonishing achievement.'
Christine Sylvester, Lancaster University
'Buzan and Hansen are scrupulously fair-minded and their book is a model of clear and elegant exposition. It will be of enormous value to students and of considerable interest to established scholars as well.'
Stephen M. Walt, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
'In this important new contribution to International Security Studies (ISS), Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen provide the field's first disciplinary history. … a thoroughly comprehensive, unerringly balanced and sophisticatedly argued account of ISS that is essential reading for newcomers and old hands alike.'
International Affairs
