Formation/Cours

Fundamental knowledge of debates on issues of risk and uncertainty within security studies in international relations.

By the end of the course, students should be able to critically assess security discourses, compare theoretical approaches, and apply them to contemporary empirical cases.

This course offers an introduction to the study of risk and uncertainty through the lens of security. It examines how security has progressively shifted from a focus on identifiable threats and enemies toward the governance of uncertain, probabilistic, and often future-oriented risks.

The course combines classical security studies with sociological, constructivist, and critical approaches to show how risk rationalities reshape political authority, knowledge production, and practices of intervention.

Students will learn how security problems are framed, measured, anticipated, and governed across different domains (war, terrorism, climate change, migration, nuclear politics, policing, and digital technologies). Particular attention is paid to the role of expertise, statistics, technologies, and everyday knowledge in making insecurity governable.

SESSIONS AND READINGS

PART I: CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS: Security, Risk, Uncertainty

S1_Introduction: Mapping the Field

• Best Jaqueline (2008), ‘Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and Risk: Rethinking Indeterminacy’, International Political Sociology, No.2, pp. 355-374.
• Petersen Karen (2011), ‘Risk analysis – A field within security studies?,’ European Journal of International Relations, 18(4): pp. 693–717.

S2_Rationalist Security: Threats, Interests, and Strategic Calculation

• Ikenberry John (2004), “Liberalism and empire: logics of order in the American unipolar age”, Review of International Studies, 30: pp. 609–630
• Mearsheimer John J. & Walt Stephen M. (2003), “An Unnecessary War”, Foreign Policy, Washington N° 134, (Jan/Feb 2003): pp. 50-59.

Discussion: To what extent do these approaches leave room for uncertainty and miscalculation?

S3_Risk Society: From Threats to Probabilistic Futures

• Beck Ulrich (2001), ‘Interview with Ulrich Beck’, Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol 1(2): pp. 261–277.
• Jarvis Darryl S. L. (2007), ‘Risk, Globalisation and the State: A Critical Appraisal of Ulrich Beck and the World Risk Society Thesis’, Global Society, Vol. 21, No 1: 23-46.

PART II: CONSTRUCTING AND GOVERNING SECURITY

S4_The social construction of security

• Waever Ole (1993): ‘Securitisation and desecuritization’, in R. Lipschutz, On Security, chapter 3.
• Huysmans Jef (2002), ‘Defining Social Constructivism in Security Studies: The Normative Dilemma of Writing Security,’ Alternatives, 27: pp. 41-62.

S5_Governmentality: Risk as a Technology of Power

• Aradau Claudia & van Münster Rens (2008), ‘Insuring terrorism, assuring subjects, ensuring normality: The politics of risk after 9/11’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 33(2): pp. 191–210.
• Kessler Oliver and Daase Christopher (2008), ‘From Insecurity to Uncertainty: Risk and the Paradox of Security Politics,’ Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 33, No. 2: pp. 211-232.

PART III: APPLICATIONS: Risk and Uncertainty Across Security Domains

S6_Environmental Security: Climate Change and Disasters

• Andrabi Shazana (2022), ‘Decolonising knowledge production in disaster management: a feminist perspective’, Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 202-214.
• Corry Olaf (2012), ‘ ‘Securitisation’ and ‘Riskification’: Second-order Security and the Politics of Climate Change,’ in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 40(2): pp. 235–258.

S7_Migration and Borders: Vernacular Knowledge and Lived Uncertainty

• Scheel Stephan (2022), ‘Reconfiguring Desecuritization: Contesting Expert Knowledge in the Securitizatio