Pub Date : 2021-01-19DOI: 10.1080/21624887.2020.1858675
Faye Donnelly, William Vlcek
ABSTRACT This article investigates a ‘tale of two currencies’ that played out during the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum. Taking our cue from securitisation literature, we examine what happens when currency is framed as a security issue and threat. Studying this case, however, we find that the Copenhagen School underestimate the ability of actors to perform (de)securitising moves within interactive games about financial security. In such instances, we contend that currency can have significant yet unpredictable effects on how security can be spoken, enacted, and contested. Drawing attention to the heated debates that erupted during the two televised debates aired by STV and BBC, we reveal that the question of currency shaped the ‘Better Together’ and ‘Yes’ campaigns during the 2014 referendum in divergent ways. In the process, we find that currency offers new opportunities for understanding how money can speak security in Scotland and beyond.
{"title":"A tale of two currencies: talking about money and (De)Securitising moves in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum","authors":"Faye Donnelly, William Vlcek","doi":"10.1080/21624887.2020.1858675","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2020.1858675","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article investigates a ‘tale of two currencies’ that played out during the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum. Taking our cue from securitisation literature, we examine what happens when currency is framed as a security issue and threat. Studying this case, however, we find that the Copenhagen School underestimate the ability of actors to perform (de)securitising moves within interactive games about financial security. In such instances, we contend that currency can have significant yet unpredictable effects on how security can be spoken, enacted, and contested. Drawing attention to the heated debates that erupted during the two televised debates aired by STV and BBC, we reveal that the question of currency shaped the ‘Better Together’ and ‘Yes’ campaigns during the 2014 referendum in divergent ways. In the process, we find that currency offers new opportunities for understanding how money can speak security in Scotland and beyond.","PeriodicalId":29930,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies on Security","volume":"9 1","pages":"98 - 111"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21624887.2020.1858675","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49324958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-19DOI: 10.1080/21624887.2021.1875713
Tianyang Liu, Tianru Guan
ABSTRACT This article theorises epistemologies of ‘space’ in critical studies on terrorism, expanding the research agenda beyond the straitjacket of historicism and discourse-centrism. It traces two theoretical approaches: 1) rescaling terrorism as mundane, situated and private, and 2) treating the ‘space’ of terrorism as a liminal zone between potentiality and anticipatory space-making. This critical spatial lens offers new insights to CTS. In terms of securitisation, this perspective is attentive to the ‘space of securitisation’, the dynamics of space, or space as a discursive process and a subject constitutive of securitisation. In the study of radicalisation, it can help us understand how space and the psychological interpretation of material conditions are co-constituted to shape the process of radicalisation. Finally, it also creates new possibilities for CTS practitioners to employ the embodied, embodying and sensory dimensions of violence, involving not only visual and material dimensions but also sound and hearing, to form an individualised form of resistance against state terrorism. This article attempts to systematically map the permutations of new theoretical and conceptual developments in the critical studies on the spatiality of terrorism.
{"title":"A critical study of space in the geopolitics of terrorism","authors":"Tianyang Liu, Tianru Guan","doi":"10.1080/21624887.2021.1875713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2021.1875713","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article theorises epistemologies of ‘space’ in critical studies on terrorism, expanding the research agenda beyond the straitjacket of historicism and discourse-centrism. It traces two theoretical approaches: 1) rescaling terrorism as mundane, situated and private, and 2) treating the ‘space’ of terrorism as a liminal zone between potentiality and anticipatory space-making. This critical spatial lens offers new insights to CTS. In terms of securitisation, this perspective is attentive to the ‘space of securitisation’, the dynamics of space, or space as a discursive process and a subject constitutive of securitisation. In the study of radicalisation, it can help us understand how space and the psychological interpretation of material conditions are co-constituted to shape the process of radicalisation. Finally, it also creates new possibilities for CTS practitioners to employ the embodied, embodying and sensory dimensions of violence, involving not only visual and material dimensions but also sound and hearing, to form an individualised form of resistance against state terrorism. This article attempts to systematically map the permutations of new theoretical and conceptual developments in the critical studies on the spatiality of terrorism.","PeriodicalId":29930,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies on Security","volume":"9 1","pages":"126 - 140"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21624887.2021.1875713","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43684047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21624887.2021.1904188
Shine Choi
ABSTRACT In this imagined conversation with an indie music singer-song writer and artist, Lee Lang, I creatively explore what it means to understand racism and sexism as global security problems. Reframing academic conversations about security and politics in everyday contexts and language, the conversation shares the lived experiences of two Korean women as we make our respective ways in our chosen professions from different locations. Making decisions and telling stories safely emerge as major security and political problems we share, and intimately understand. By making this deeply human and personal scale intervention, I critically reposition academia’s relationship to solving important ‘strange questions’ of our times, and invite people to stop hiding behind institutions to perpetuate hierarchy and discriminatory and exploitative practices.
{"title":"Telling our racism and sexism stories safely is a global security problem: a conversation between complainers","authors":"Shine Choi","doi":"10.1080/21624887.2021.1904188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904188","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this imagined conversation with an indie music singer-song writer and artist, Lee Lang, I creatively explore what it means to understand racism and sexism as global security problems. Reframing academic conversations about security and politics in everyday contexts and language, the conversation shares the lived experiences of two Korean women as we make our respective ways in our chosen professions from different locations. Making decisions and telling stories safely emerge as major security and political problems we share, and intimately understand. By making this deeply human and personal scale intervention, I critically reposition academia’s relationship to solving important ‘strange questions’ of our times, and invite people to stop hiding behind institutions to perpetuate hierarchy and discriminatory and exploitative practices.","PeriodicalId":29930,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies on Security","volume":"9 1","pages":"7 - 11"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904188","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45269276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21624887.2021.1904192
T. Haastrup, Jamie J. Hagen
ABSTRACT In this article, we address hierarchies of knowledge production that have emerged in the two decades of researching the global normative framework, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. We argue that through the constitution of Centres of Excellence (CoE), the well-meaning processes of producing WPS knowledge can reify prevailing global racial hierarchies. We find that these processes rather than achieving emancipatory feminist outcomes can instead serve to narrow the scope of inquiry, pushing marginalised peoples further to the margins.
{"title":"Racial hierarchies of knowledge production in the Women, Peace and Security agenda","authors":"T. Haastrup, Jamie J. Hagen","doi":"10.1080/21624887.2021.1904192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904192","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, we address hierarchies of knowledge production that have emerged in the two decades of researching the global normative framework, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. We argue that through the constitution of Centres of Excellence (CoE), the well-meaning processes of producing WPS knowledge can reify prevailing global racial hierarchies. We find that these processes rather than achieving emancipatory feminist outcomes can instead serve to narrow the scope of inquiry, pushing marginalised peoples further to the margins.","PeriodicalId":29930,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies on Security","volume":"9 1","pages":"27 - 30"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904192","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46613108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21624887.2021.1904357
Hamza Hamouchene
The coronavirus pandemic coincides with and exacerbates a multifaceted global crisis: political, economic, social, environmental and climatic. In other words, we are currently experiencing a crisis of a patriarchal, racial capitalist system, which will have grave and disproportionate impacts on the vulnerable and marginalised groups, especially in countries of the Global South. Moreover, the pandemic is not merely a health issue; it is also an environmental one. In fact, the emergence of the coronavirus is linked to the capitalist destruction of eco-systems through intensive agribusiness and industrial animal farming as well as the commodification of nature through extractivism, land grabbing, deforestation and loss of habitat (Wallace et al. 2020). Basically, we cannot consider this pandemic as an isolated event unrelated to the global ecological crisis. What we are living now is a taster of worse things to come if we do not take the necessary measures and implement just solutions to the unfolding climate crisis. Before I delve into some details from North Africa, I would like to make a few preliminary points. The endeavour to decolonise pandemic politics needs to take into consideration two important elements:
冠状病毒大流行恰逢并加剧了政治、经济、社会、环境和气候等多方面的全球危机。换句话说，我们目前正在经历一场宗法、种族资本主义制度的危机，这将对脆弱和边缘化群体产生严重和不成比例的影响，特别是在全球南方国家。此外，大流行不仅是一个健康问题;这也是一个环境问题。事实上，冠状病毒的出现与资本主义通过集约化农业综合企业和工业化畜牧业破坏生态系统，以及通过采掘、土地掠夺、森林砍伐和栖息地丧失使自然商品化有关(Wallace et al. 2020)。基本上，我们不能把这次大流行视为与全球生态危机无关的孤立事件。如果我们不采取必要的措施，实施公正的解决方案来应对不断发展的气候危机，我们现在的生活就是对更糟糕的事情的一种品尝。在详细介绍北非情况之前，我想先谈几点初步看法。使流行病政治非殖民化的努力需要考虑到两个重要因素:
{"title":"Decolonising pandemic politics: a view from North Africa","authors":"Hamza Hamouchene","doi":"10.1080/21624887.2021.1904357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904357","url":null,"abstract":"The coronavirus pandemic coincides with and exacerbates a multifaceted global crisis: political, economic, social, environmental and climatic. In other words, we are currently experiencing a crisis of a patriarchal, racial capitalist system, which will have grave and disproportionate impacts on the vulnerable and marginalised groups, especially in countries of the Global South. Moreover, the pandemic is not merely a health issue; it is also an environmental one. In fact, the emergence of the coronavirus is linked to the capitalist destruction of eco-systems through intensive agribusiness and industrial animal farming as well as the commodification of nature through extractivism, land grabbing, deforestation and loss of habitat (Wallace et al. 2020). Basically, we cannot consider this pandemic as an isolated event unrelated to the global ecological crisis. What we are living now is a taster of worse things to come if we do not take the necessary measures and implement just solutions to the unfolding climate crisis. Before I delve into some details from North Africa, I would like to make a few preliminary points. The endeavour to decolonise pandemic politics needs to take into consideration two important elements:","PeriodicalId":29930,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies on Security","volume":"9 1","pages":"53 - 57"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904357","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48712375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21624887.2021.1904362
Erzsébet Strausz
As I was preparing for my first fully online course in September, I remember distinctly that feeling of uncertainty, even anxiety, emanating from the fact that whoever would end up sharing the online space that I was planning, creating, crafting in that moment, would not have met each other in person. None of the students had met either their peers, or me, their instructor, face-to-face, and we all knew that it would stay like that for the entire term. We would hear each other’s voices and see images of faces and upper bodies distorted by different intensities of light, framed by doors, pets, plants and accidental visitors. This was different to the switch to online teaching as an emergency measure that happened earlier in the Spring. After several weeks of ‘conventional’ in person exchanges, what had been built collectively and personally until that time – perceptions, habits, a modus operandi that comes with some element of trust – came to a test in a new setting; yet there was something there to be tested and probed into, and as such, to rely on. That subtle, invisible band of information that wraps around bodies and composes experiences as people move in and out of physical spaces was not going to be there this time. The affective, emotive hinges that we sense and make sense of, through which we work situations out and ‘get’ things and people, or at least the seeming naturalness of these unconscious mechanisms when bodies are co-present, would be limited. The intangible yet very much present trails of thoughts, feelings, and actions that belong to a person and carry their information, energy and ‘beingness’ within a limited distance, almost palpably, as a silent, unuttered, unconscious ‘hello’ to others, creating momentary exposures to the infinite complexity of another world, would not be accessible. ‘Everyone will arrive in their own cocoon’ – I thought to myself – ‘and will remain there, at least for some time, if not for the whole course. What is my role as a teacher here?’ Somewhat more poignantly, this question begs another, more fundamental one: what would be my role otherwise? I have been thinking with and along Jacques Rancière’s figure of ‘the ignorant schoolmaster’ (1991) for several years now. I had come to the temporary conclusion that my main task is not to explain, let alone, alluding to Freire, ‘deposit’ knowledge or information in anyone’s head (Freire 2000, 72). There are several lines that I formulated for myself to actualise this sentiment for my own teaching practice, one of which sounded like this: ‘I want to affirm to my students that they are capable of figuring things out for themselves’. That is, I just need to find a way to help them turn inwards so that they can tap into the infinite power of their own minds and learn how to work with it, how to own it with openness and curiosity. ‘I will just hang around as a “vanishing mediator”, and listen to accounts of how “sense” had been made. I will be there to prompt, prov
{"title":"The affirmative power of presence through absence, online","authors":"Erzsébet Strausz","doi":"10.1080/21624887.2021.1904362","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904362","url":null,"abstract":"As I was preparing for my first fully online course in September, I remember distinctly that feeling of uncertainty, even anxiety, emanating from the fact that whoever would end up sharing the online space that I was planning, creating, crafting in that moment, would not have met each other in person. None of the students had met either their peers, or me, their instructor, face-to-face, and we all knew that it would stay like that for the entire term. We would hear each other’s voices and see images of faces and upper bodies distorted by different intensities of light, framed by doors, pets, plants and accidental visitors. This was different to the switch to online teaching as an emergency measure that happened earlier in the Spring. After several weeks of ‘conventional’ in person exchanges, what had been built collectively and personally until that time – perceptions, habits, a modus operandi that comes with some element of trust – came to a test in a new setting; yet there was something there to be tested and probed into, and as such, to rely on. That subtle, invisible band of information that wraps around bodies and composes experiences as people move in and out of physical spaces was not going to be there this time. The affective, emotive hinges that we sense and make sense of, through which we work situations out and ‘get’ things and people, or at least the seeming naturalness of these unconscious mechanisms when bodies are co-present, would be limited. The intangible yet very much present trails of thoughts, feelings, and actions that belong to a person and carry their information, energy and ‘beingness’ within a limited distance, almost palpably, as a silent, unuttered, unconscious ‘hello’ to others, creating momentary exposures to the infinite complexity of another world, would not be accessible. ‘Everyone will arrive in their own cocoon’ – I thought to myself – ‘and will remain there, at least for some time, if not for the whole course. What is my role as a teacher here?’ Somewhat more poignantly, this question begs another, more fundamental one: what would be my role otherwise? I have been thinking with and along Jacques Rancière’s figure of ‘the ignorant schoolmaster’ (1991) for several years now. I had come to the temporary conclusion that my main task is not to explain, let alone, alluding to Freire, ‘deposit’ knowledge or information in anyone’s head (Freire 2000, 72). There are several lines that I formulated for myself to actualise this sentiment for my own teaching practice, one of which sounded like this: ‘I want to affirm to my students that they are capable of figuring things out for themselves’. That is, I just need to find a way to help them turn inwards so that they can tap into the infinite power of their own minds and learn how to work with it, how to own it with openness and curiosity. ‘I will just hang around as a “vanishing mediator”, and listen to accounts of how “sense” had been made. I will be there to prompt, prov","PeriodicalId":29930,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies on Security","volume":"9 1","pages":"67 - 71"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904362","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43639482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21624887.2021.1904359
N. Kaul
In a world with drastic and exacerbating inequalities where health and well-being have been supplanted by wealth and hell being, the pandemic is a complex global occurrence that affected different subsets of populations with variable intensity within and across national borders. The pandemic and the responses to it must force us yet again to rethink the most fundamental aspects of security and power. As many critical scholars have often argued, human security is not assured by increased defence budgets, and the idea of big powers and strong states mean little if that size and strength cannot translate into the well-being of the population. In this article, I reflect upon the reasons why a country like Bhutan has been able to successfully manage the pandemic in a way that many larger and wealthier nations have not. I have been substantively involved in studying Bhutan for over a decade and a half, having worked on analysing its transition to democracy and democratic consolidation between 2008 and 2018, and currently leading my research project on conceptualising an understanding of biodemocracy using Bhutan as an exemplar, which examines the political, developmental, and ecological dimensions of policymaking in this country. Bhutan is a small Himalayan country with significant resource constraints (a low-income country) and yet it did not lose a single person to the pandemic in 2020. As of late March 2021, there has been one Covid-related death in Bhutan of a 34-year-old man with chronic liver disease and renal failure, who tested positive for COVID-19 and died at a hospital in the capital Thimphu (“Bhutan reports,” 2021). While pandemic profiteering affects wealthy advanced democracies like the UK where allegations emerged of cronyism in the awarding of contracts and the lockdown policies were often shambolic, in Bhutan, from the very outset, the head of state, the government, the bureaucracy, and the citizenry came together to swiftly and substantively mitigate the public health crisis (see Ongmo and Parikh 2020). The first Covid patient in Bhutan in March 2020 was an American tourist, whose presentation was atypical, yet the dedicated procedures and swift decisionmaking meant that he was identified and treated. In addition, those attending to him were isolated and monitored, and provided with counselling for trauma afterwards (for details, see LeVine et al. 2020). Contact tracing in Bhutan has been rigorous and efficient. At a very early stage, on March 22nd, Bhutan instituted travel restrictions to prevent foreign import, and managed to avoid community transmission until very late in 2020. Travel facilities were arranged for those Bhutanese who were abroad and wished to return to the country. Anyone coming into the country was required to undergo tests and extended mandatory quarantine (21 instead of the usual 14 days) at designated hotels; this was paid for by the government. Until September 2020 (after which public cost sharing was introduce
在一个不平等现象严重且日益加剧的世界上，健康和福祉已被财富和地狱所取代，这一流行病是一种复杂的全球现象，影响着国家境内外不同的人口群体，其强度各不相同。这一大流行病及其应对措施必须再次迫使我们重新思考安全和权力的最基本方面。正如许多持批评态度的学者经常指出的那样，增加国防预算并不能保证人类安全，如果规模和实力不能转化为人民的福祉，那么大国和强国的概念就没有什么意义。在这篇文章中，我思考了为什么像不丹这样的国家能够以许多更大、更富裕的国家无法做到的方式成功地控制这一流行病。我一直在实质性地参与研究不丹超过十年半，曾在分析其过渡到民主和民主巩固2008年和2018年之间的工作，目前领导我的研究项目概念化生物民主的理解使用不丹为例，它检查了政治，发展和生态层面的政策制定在这个国家。不丹是一个资源严重受限的喜马拉雅小国(一个低收入国家)，但它在2020年没有因大流行而失去一个人。截至2021年3月下旬，不丹有一名34岁的慢性肝病和肾衰竭患者与COVID-19相关死亡，他的COVID-19检测呈阳性，并在首都廷布的一家医院死亡(“不丹报告”，2021年)。虽然大流行的暴利行为影响了富裕的发达民主国家，如英国，在那里出现了在合同授予中任人自亲的指控，封锁政策往往是混乱的，但在不丹，从一开始，国家元首、政府、官僚机构和公民就团结起来，迅速而实质性地缓解了公共卫生危机(见Ongmo和Parikh 2020)。2020年3月，不丹的第一位新冠肺炎患者是一名美国游客，他的表现不典型，但专门的程序和迅速的决策意味着他得到了识别和治疗。此外，对那些照顾他的人进行隔离和监测，并在事后提供创伤咨询(详细信息，见LeVine et al. 2020)。不丹的接触者追踪工作严格而有效。在非常早期的阶段，3月22日，不丹制定了旅行限制以防止外国进口，并设法避免社区传播，直到2020年底。为那些在国外并希望回国的不丹人安排了旅行设施。任何进入该国的人都必须在指定的酒店接受检测和延长强制隔离(21天，而不是通常的14天);这是由政府支付的。截至2020年9月(引入公共费用分担制后)，政府为14667人提供隔离设施的酒店支出了2.4827亿韩元(“分摊费用”，2020年)。不丹面临的流行病挑战并非微不足道;它与世界上人口最多的两个国家——印度和中国接壤，这两个国家都受到疫情的严重影响。它与它的过境国印度和其他国家有大量的贸易
{"title":"Small state, big example: Covid pandemic management in Bhutan","authors":"N. Kaul","doi":"10.1080/21624887.2021.1904359","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904359","url":null,"abstract":"In a world with drastic and exacerbating inequalities where health and well-being have been supplanted by wealth and hell being, the pandemic is a complex global occurrence that affected different subsets of populations with variable intensity within and across national borders. The pandemic and the responses to it must force us yet again to rethink the most fundamental aspects of security and power. As many critical scholars have often argued, human security is not assured by increased defence budgets, and the idea of big powers and strong states mean little if that size and strength cannot translate into the well-being of the population. In this article, I reflect upon the reasons why a country like Bhutan has been able to successfully manage the pandemic in a way that many larger and wealthier nations have not. I have been substantively involved in studying Bhutan for over a decade and a half, having worked on analysing its transition to democracy and democratic consolidation between 2008 and 2018, and currently leading my research project on conceptualising an understanding of biodemocracy using Bhutan as an exemplar, which examines the political, developmental, and ecological dimensions of policymaking in this country. Bhutan is a small Himalayan country with significant resource constraints (a low-income country) and yet it did not lose a single person to the pandemic in 2020. As of late March 2021, there has been one Covid-related death in Bhutan of a 34-year-old man with chronic liver disease and renal failure, who tested positive for COVID-19 and died at a hospital in the capital Thimphu (“Bhutan reports,” 2021). While pandemic profiteering affects wealthy advanced democracies like the UK where allegations emerged of cronyism in the awarding of contracts and the lockdown policies were often shambolic, in Bhutan, from the very outset, the head of state, the government, the bureaucracy, and the citizenry came together to swiftly and substantively mitigate the public health crisis (see Ongmo and Parikh 2020). The first Covid patient in Bhutan in March 2020 was an American tourist, whose presentation was atypical, yet the dedicated procedures and swift decisionmaking meant that he was identified and treated. In addition, those attending to him were isolated and monitored, and provided with counselling for trauma afterwards (for details, see LeVine et al. 2020). Contact tracing in Bhutan has been rigorous and efficient. At a very early stage, on March 22nd, Bhutan instituted travel restrictions to prevent foreign import, and managed to avoid community transmission until very late in 2020. Travel facilities were arranged for those Bhutanese who were abroad and wished to return to the country. Anyone coming into the country was required to undergo tests and extended mandatory quarantine (21 instead of the usual 14 days) at designated hotels; this was paid for by the government. Until September 2020 (after which public cost sharing was introduce","PeriodicalId":29930,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies on Security","volume":"9 1","pages":"58 - 62"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904359","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44972864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21624887.2021.1904191
Marsha Henry
ABSTRACT This intervention is concerned with whiteness as central to the operation of women/gender, peace and security in academic settings. That is, G/WPS in universities is founded on white authority and expertise and consistently orients itself from the privileged viewpoint of the global north. Through two brief examples, I show how the generation of research on G/WPS consistently centres and relies on white starting points, in order to convey the ‘necessity’ of G/WPS in the university and to government funders. In doing so, the use of critical race theories and Black feminist concepts, as well as the presence of Black scholars, remains marginal.
{"title":"On the necessity of critical race feminism for women, peace and security","authors":"Marsha Henry","doi":"10.1080/21624887.2021.1904191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904191","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This intervention is concerned with whiteness as central to the operation of women/gender, peace and security in academic settings. That is, G/WPS in universities is founded on white authority and expertise and consistently orients itself from the privileged viewpoint of the global north. Through two brief examples, I show how the generation of research on G/WPS consistently centres and relies on white starting points, in order to convey the ‘necessity’ of G/WPS in the university and to government funders. In doing so, the use of critical race theories and Black feminist concepts, as well as the presence of Black scholars, remains marginal.","PeriodicalId":29930,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies on Security","volume":"9 1","pages":"22 - 26"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904191","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42475576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21624887.2021.1904361
Umut Ozguc
In September 2020, at the new Kara Tepe camp on the Greek island Lesvos, 240 refugees tested positive for the coronavirus (BBC 2020). The temporary camp was built after a catastrophic fire had brok...
{"title":"Three lines of pandemic borders: from necropolitics to hope as a method of living","authors":"Umut Ozguc","doi":"10.1080/21624887.2021.1904361","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904361","url":null,"abstract":"In September 2020, at the new Kara Tepe camp on the Greek island Lesvos, 240 refugees tested positive for the coronavirus (BBC 2020). The temporary camp was built after a catastrophic fire had brok...","PeriodicalId":29930,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies on Security","volume":"9 1","pages":"63 - 66"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904361","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49082318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21624887.2021.1904363
L. Jarvis
The designation of, and response to, specific issues as security challenges is neither self-evident nor inevitable (e.g. Buzan, Waever, and De Wilde 1998). Causes of harm must be constructed or perf...
{"title":"Covid-19 and the politics of temporality: constructing credibility in coronavirus discourse","authors":"L. Jarvis","doi":"10.1080/21624887.2021.1904363","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904363","url":null,"abstract":"The designation of, and response to, specific issues as security challenges is neither self-evident nor inevitable (e.g. Buzan, Waever, and De Wilde 1998). Causes of harm must be constructed or perf...","PeriodicalId":29930,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies on Security","volume":"9 1","pages":"72 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904363","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44820208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：