Feminist Security Studies: A Narrative Approach(PRIO New Security Studies)

This book rethinks security theory from a feminist perspective -- uniquely, it engages feminism, security, and strategic studies to provide a distinct feminist approach to security studies. The volume explicitly works toward an opening up of security studies that would allow for feminist (and other) narratives to be recognized and taken seriously as security narratives. To make this possible, it presents a feminist reading of security studies that aims to invigorate the debate and radicalize critical security studies. Since feminism is a political project, and security studies are, at their base, about particular visions of the political and their attendant institutions, this is of necessity a political intervention. The book works through and beyond security studies to explore possible spaces where an opening of security, necessary to make way for feminist insights, can take place. While it develops and illustrates a feminist narrative approach to security, it is also intended as an intervention that challenges the politics of security and the meanings for security legitimized in existing practices. This book provides develops a comprehensive framework for the emerging field of feminist security studies and will be of great interest to students and scholars of feminist IR, critical security studies, gender studies and IR and security studies in general.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Feminist Interventions: The Politics of Identity 2. Challenging Meanings 3. Toward A Narrative Approach 4. Security As Narrative 5. Feminist Security Narratives. Conclusion: The Future of Feminist Security Studies

About the Author :
Annick T.R. Wibben is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Studies as well as Chair of the interdisciplinary Bachelor Program in International Studies at the University of San Francisco (USF), USA. From 2001- 2005 she was the Co-Investigator of the Information Technology, War and Peace Project at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, USA.

Review :
'This book lucidly articulates a narrative feminist approach in critical security studies and offers a constructive research strategy for studying contextual security narratives.' -- Xymena Kuroswka, European Security '.. an important theoretical contribution to debates over the politics and practices of security. Wibben offers the first full volume outlining the productive possibilities of integrating narratology and security studies and as such this book deserves to be taken seriously, read widely and cited often.'-- Laura J. Shepherd, International Feminist Journal of Politics 'Wibben's book is a renewed wakeup call for security studies scholars caught in the epistemological and methodological traps of the field.' -- Megan H. MacKenzie, Journal of Contemporary European Studies 'Given the sustained engagement with a narrative approach to IR, this book should be widely adopted in graduate International Relations, International Security and Gender studies courses, where stimulating research and innovative doctoral projects will likely be sparked by it.' - Maria Martin de Almagro, e-IR