The International in Security, Security in the International

Book excerpt: International Relations continues to come under fire for its relative absence of international perspectives. In this exciting new volume, Pinar Bilgin encourages readers to consider both why and how ‘non-core’ geocultural sites allow us to think differently about key aspects of global politics. Seeking to further debates surrounding thinking beyond the 'West/non-West' divide, this book analyzes how scholarship on, and conceptions of, the international outside core contexts are tied up with peripheral actors’ search for security. Accordingly, Bilgin looks at core/periphery dynamics not only in terms of the production of knowledge in the production of IR scholarship, or material threats, but also peripheral actors' conceptions of the international in terms of 'standard of civilization' and their more contemporary guises, which she terms as ‘hierarchy in anarchical society’. The first three chapters provide a critical overview of the limits of ‘our’ theorizing about IR and security, as well as a discussion on the track record of critical approaches to IR and security in addressing those limits. The following three chapters offer one way of addressing the limits of ‘our’ theorizing about IR and security: by inquiring into the international in security, security in the international. Each of these chapters makes a theoretical point and illustrates this further in a spotlight section that further illustrates the point to aid student learning. A genuinely innovative contribution to this rapidly emerging field within IR, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of critical security, international relations theory and Global IR.