5/07/2008
Theory of World Security
Ken Booth: Theory of World Security
Paperback: 489 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press 2007
ISBN: 978-0-521-54317-0
Ken Booth, not to be mistaken for Ken Boothe, is a political scientist at Aberystwyth University in Wales, who has worked to develop a theory of critical security studies. Theory of World Security can be regarded as the attempt at a magnum opus of CSS, where Booth advances his emancipatory realism.
Paperback: 489 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press 2007
ISBN: 978-0-521-54317-0
Ken Booth, not to be mistaken for Ken Boothe, is a political scientist at Aberystwyth University in Wales, who has worked to develop a theory of critical security studies. Theory of World Security can be regarded as the attempt at a magnum opus of CSS, where Booth advances his emancipatory realism.
"...every person faces the existential challenge of having to live a life" p. 352
Emancipatory realism attempts to trascend the crude world of power politics with the means of cosmopolitan democracy. Booth attempts to politicize security issues and switch the focus from the traditional and static levels of state, military power and balance-of-power to individuals, human rights and international community levels.
The epistemological background if a mixture of phenomelogy and post-positivist understandings of science - the normative and motivational aspects are provided by critical theory and historical sociology. In the end, Theory of World Security is, unfortunately, just a collection of buzzwords and slogans and the end-product is utopian well-wishing. Apart from a couple of promising concepts, Booth's book is disappointing.
The concept of transcendence (of power politics) is, I'd argue, useful in evaluing foreign policies. What states try to transcend crude realism, how and why they do it? These questions could well be researched more in-depth and the answers might give us a hint towards a better world.
The concept of transcendence (of power politics) is, I'd argue, useful in evaluing foreign policies. What states try to transcend crude realism, how and why they do it? These questions could well be researched more in-depth and the answers might give us a hint towards a better world.
¶ 5/07/2008 09:40:00 ip."But realism never really went away. Some mistook the power politics of the Bush/Blair push for war against Iraq for a revival of realism, though the fact is that leading academic realists in the United States opposed the war. Good realists do not allow themselves to become embroiled in unnecessary, unwise, illegal, and unpopular wars. The commitment of good realists to the prudent use of state military power is by no means always contrary to the political orientation of critical security thinking." p. 33
