Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The nature of securitisation theory
- 2 A revised securitisation theory
- 3 The rise of US environmental security
- 4 The Clinton administrations and environmental security
- 5 The Bush administrations and environmental security
- 6 The moral evaluation of environmental security
- 7 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The nature of securitisation theory
- 2 A revised securitisation theory
- 3 The rise of US environmental security
- 4 The Clinton administrations and environmental security
- 5 The Bush administrations and environmental security
- 6 The moral evaluation of environmental security
- 7 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This book proposes a revision of the Copenhagen School's influential securitisation theory that both allows insights into the intentions of securitising actors, and enables the moral evaluation of securitisation and desecuritisation in the environmental sector of security. Securitisation theory holds that in international relations an issue becomes a matter of emergency politics/a security issue not because something constitutes an objective threat to the state or to some other entity, but rather because a powerful securitising actor argues that something constitutes an existential threat to some object that needs to be dealt with immediately if the object is to survive. The idea that by saying something, something is being done is, in language theory, known as a ‘performative speech act’. In securitisation theory, however, the performative speech act part – the securitising move – only evolves into a complete securitisation at the point when a designated ‘audience’ accepts the speech act. Upon acceptance by the audience, the issue is said to have moved out of the sphere of normal politics and into the realm of emergency politics, where it can be dealt with swiftly and without the normal rules and regulations of policy making. As regards the concept of security, this means that it has no meaning outside of this logic; security is a ‘self-referential’ practice; the meaning of security is what is done with it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Security and the EnvironmentSecuritisation Theory and US Environmental Security Policy, pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010