Nyman, J. orcid.org/0000-0003-2833-5315 (2023) Towards a global security studies: what can looking at China tell us about the concept of security? European Journal of International Relations, 29 (3). pp. 673-697. ISSN 1354-0661
Abstract
Existing scholarship has demonstrated that theorising about security is Eurocentric. This leaves us with a partial account of the concept of security, which is presented as universal. This in turn generates explanatory problems because we are only seeing part of the picture. Yet there have been few attempts to move beyond critiques of Eurocentrism to examine the concept of security ‘elsewhere’. This paper takes China as its starting point, asking: what can looking at China tell us about security? In answering this question, the paper makes two contributions. First, it presents new empirical findings, building a conceptual history of security in China. Drawing on 140 key texts dating 1926–2022, the paper traces the emergence of the concept of security in China and its evolution through three explicit security concepts. Drawing on postcolonial insights it demonstrates that these concepts are hybrid, evolving out of multiple domestic and international influences. They have similarities as well as differences with the Eurocentric concept that dominates International Security Studies (ISS) and produce a discrete approach towards security that has been overlooked in a discipline that uses ‘Europe to explain Asia’. Second, considering these insights, the paper demonstrates that the universal concept of security that underpins theorising in ISS is partial and misleading. Differences in security concepts matter for theorising security and for understanding security policy. Consequently, I argue that we need to provincialize the concept of security: a truly global security studies is of necessity a provincial one attuned to difference and similarity.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Post-colonialism; international history; eurocentrism; international relations; security; critical security studies |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 15 Aug 2023 11:07 |
Last Modified: | 15 Aug 2023 11:07 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/13540661231176990 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:202427 |