Conceptions of modernity in security studies: the study of security in the Global South
Author(s)
Advisor
Bilgin, Hatice PınarDate
2019-07Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
Security Studies has portrayed states in the Global South as a threat to international
security and overlooked insecurities experienced by people and social groups in the
Global South. In security studies, security in the Global South has been explained in
terms of incompleteness of states in the Global South. The dissertation questions how
it is possible that security studies has accounted for security in the Global South in
terms of a lack. The argument of dissertation is that the study of security in the Global
South is related to the conception of modernity shaping security studies, which locates
the Global South outside of world politics. This dissertation builds its argument in
four steps. First, it identifies three dimensions of modernity, namely, time, ontology
and sociality of world politics. These dimensions help to unpack conceptions of
modernity in security studies, which vary across these three dimensions. Second, the
dissertation unpacks conception of modernity shaping realist approaches to security and Third World security scholars’ analyses in order to examine their respective
understandings of the relationship between the Global North and the Global South in
security relations. Third, it asks how those, who are critical of these approaches,
namely, critical and postcolonial approaches to security have understood the
relationship. Fourth, the dissertation shows its argument by illustrating from studies
on nuclear non-proliferation in the Global South.