The Routledge Handbook of Security Studies

The field of Security Studies has undergone significant change during the past twenty years, and is now one of the most dynamic sub-disciplines within International Relations. It encompasses issues ranging from pandemics and environmental degradation to more traditional concerns about direct violence, such as those posed by international terrorism and inter-state armed conflict. A comprehensive volume, comprising articles by both established and up-and-coming scholars, the Handbook of Security Studies identifies the key contemporary topics of research and debate today. This Handbook is a benchmark publication with major importance both for current research and the future of the field. It will be essential reading for all scholars and students of Security Studies, War and Conflict Studies, and International Relations.

Claudia Aradau (Open University) and Rens van Munster (DIIS) have contributed a chapter to the Handbook, titled Post-structuralism, Continental Philosophy and the Re-making of Security Studies. In this chapter, they trace the contribution of critical scholarship to security studies since the early 1990s. In particular, they discuss different ways of understanding security as a principle of formation that constitutes social relationships, often through then deployment of violent sovereign and biopolitical practices. Their chapter draws on a larger body of continental thought to think against these practices and to transform the relationship between "friend" and "enemy" that security brings about