Browsing by Author "Bilgin, P."
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Item Open Access Alternative futures for the Middle East(Pergamon Press, 2001) Bilgin, P.This paper investigates alternative futures of security in the Middle East in an attempt to discover a path that could take the region from an insecure past to a more secure future. Looking at five scenarios about the future of world politics, namely, globalisation, fragmentation, clash of civilisations, democratic peace and the formation of a security community, the paper argues that although each scenario has its strengths (as well as weaknesses), it is the scenario that foresees the establishment of a security community that incorporates a more explicit consideration for shaping a more secure future for the Middle East.Item Open Access Arguing against security communitarianism(Routledge, 2015-09-02) Bilgin, P.Anthony Burke’s ‘security cosmopolitanism’ is a fresh and thought-provoking contribution to critical theorizing about security. In this discussion piece, I would like to join Burke’s call for ‘security cosmopolitanism’ by way of arguing against ‘security communitarianism’. I understand the latter as a particular approach that seeks to limit the scope of security to one’s community – be it the ‘nation-state’ or ‘civilization’. I will suggest that arguing against ‘security communitarianism’ requires paying further attention to the postcolonial critique of cosmopolitanism.Item Open Access Beyond statism in security studies? Human agency and security in the Middle East(Routledge, 2002) Bilgin, P.The omnipresence of statist assumptions in security studies renders the role played by human agency almost invisible. The aim of this article is to contest the statist commonsense still prevalent in security studies. The argument will be made in two parts. In the first part, I will look at three studies critical of Cold War approaches to security and argue that even these approaches (that otherwise serve as crucial correctives to Cold War fallacies) privilege the state as the primary referent or agent. As a result, they end up reinforcing statism by way of foreclosing alternative non-statist conceptions of security and the constitution of alternative futures that are not built around states as the primary focus of loyalty, decision-making power and practice. In the second half of the article it will be argued that in order to move away from statism in security studies, it is not enough to contest the primacy of the state as the referent for security; there is also the need to contest the dominant agency of the state by looking at human agency and thinking up alternative (non-statist, non-military, non-violent, non-zero-sum) practices - issues peace research has busied itself with since the 1960s. Towards this end, the article will look at the roles myriad non-state actors have played as agents of peace and security in the Middle East. Here, emphasis will be on the role of the intellectual and the theory/practice relationship in security studies.Item Open Access Beyond the 'billiard ball' model of the international?(Palgrave Macmillan Ltd., 2016) Bilgin, P.In this review symposium, Pinar Bilgin, Ann Towns and David C. Kang discuss Barry Buzan and George Lawson’s The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations. In the book, Buzan and Lawson set out to provide a history of how we came to think about international relations in the way we do today. They explore the roots of our contemporary conceptions of the state, revolution, the international and modernity. They identify the long nineteenth century, from 1776 to 1914, as the key period in which the modern state and international relations as we know them today were forged. This was a global transformation in that it reshaped the bases of power, thereby also reshaping the relations of power that govern the relations between states and other agents today, across the world. In carrying through this project, Buzan and Lawson show us not only how the modern world was transformed, but also the kind of object it became for the discipline of International Relations. As such, this is also a book about the assumptions that have shaped, and continue to shape, that discipline.Item Open Access Civilisation, dialogue, security: the challenge of post-secularism and the limits of civilisational dialogue(Cambridge University Press, 2012) Bilgin, P.The purposes of this article are twofold: (1) to consider the extent to which Dialogue of Civilisations (DoC) initiatives, as alternative visions of post-secular world order, are likely to address insecurities that they identify; and (2) to point to other insecurities that are likely to remain unidentified and unaddressed in the process. In their present conception, DoC initiatives risk falling short of addressing the very insecurities they prioritise (the stability of inter-state order) let alone attending to those experienced by non-state referents, which they overlook. The article advances three points in three steps. First, I point to how projects of civilisational dialogue have bracketed civilisation, thereby leaving intact the Huntingtonian notion of civilisations as religiously unified autochthonous entities. Second, I argue that while contributing to opening up space for communication, DoC initiatives have nevertheless failed to employ a dialogical approach to dialogue between civilisations. Third, I tease out the notion of security underpinning DoC initiatives and argue that the proponents DoC, in their haste to avert a clash, have defined security narrowly as the absence of war between states belonging to different civilisations. Theirs is also a shallow notion of security insofar as it fails to capture the derivative character of security and insecurity.Item Open Access Constructing Turkey's "western" identity during the Cold War: discourses of the intellectuals of statecraft(Sage Publications Ltd., 2005) Yilmaz, E.; Bilgin, P.[No abstract available]Item Open Access “Contrapuntal reading” as a method, an ethos, and a metaphor for global IR(Oxford University Press, 2016) Bilgin, P.How to approach Global International Relations (IR)? This is a question asked by students of IR who recognize the limits of our field while expressing their concern that those who strive for a Global IR have been less-thanclear about the “how to?” question. In this article, I point to Edward W. Said’s approach to “contrapuntal reading” as one way of approaching Global IR that embraces diversity and reflects multiple and overlapping experiences and perspectives of humankind. More specifically, I suggest that contrapuntal reading offers students of IR a method of studying world politics that focuses on our “intertwined and overlapping histories,” past and present; an ethos for approaching IR through raising the “contrapuntal awareness” of its students and offering an anchor for those who translate the findings of different perspectives; and a metaphor for thinking about Global IR as regional and global, one and many. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved.Item Open Access Item Open Access Dialogue of civilizations : a critical security studies perspective(Taylor and Francis, 2017) Bilgin, P.[No abstract available]Item Open Access From ‘rogue’ to ‘failed’ states? The fallacy of short‐termism(Sage Publications Ltd., 2004) Bilgin, P.; Morton, A. D.This article deals with the growing policymaking interest in the condition of ‘failed states’ and the calls for increased intervention as a means of coping with international terrorism. It starts by highlighting the inordinate attention initially granted to the threat posed by ‘rogue states’ to the neglect of ‘failed states’. Generally, it is argued that the prevalence of such notions has to be related to a persistence of Cold War discourse on statehood that revolves around binary oppositions of ‘failed’ versus ‘successful’ states. Specifically, the purveyors of this discourse are practitioners who focus on the supposed symptoms of state failure (international terrorism) rather than the conditions that permit such failure to occur. Here, an alternative approach to ‘state failure’ is advocated that is more cognisant of the realms of political economy and security constraining and enabling developing states and appreciative of different processes of state formation and modes of social organisation.Item Open Access Globalization and in/security: Middle Eastern encounters with international society and the case of Turkey(Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) Bilgin, P.Item Open Access Historicising representations of 'failed states': beyond the cold-war annexation of the social sciences?(Routledge, 2002) Bilgin, P.; Morton, A. D.This article examines the rise of various representations of post-colonial states to highlight how thinking and practice that arose and prevailed during the Cold War still persists in the present ostensibly post-cold war era. After initially outlining the historical construction of the social sciences, it is shown how the annexation of the social sciences evolved in the early post-World War II and cold-war era as an adjunct of the world hegemonic pretensions of the USA. A critique is then developed of various representations of post-colonial states that arose in the making of the 'Third World' during the cold-war annexation of the social sciences. Yet such practices still persist in the present, as evidenced by more contemporary representations of post-colonial states commonly revolving around elements of deficiency or failure, eg 'quasi-states', 'weak states', 'failed states' or 'rogue states'. A more historicised consideration of post-colonial statehood, that recasts conceptions of state-civil society antagonisms in terms of an appreciation of political economy and critical security concerns, offers an alternative to these representations of 'failed states'. By historicising various representations of 'failed states' it becomes possible to open up critical ways of thinking about the political economy of security and to consider alternative futures in the world order.Item Open Access How to remedy Eurocentrism in IR? A complement and a challenge for The Global Transformation(Cambridge University Press, 2016-11) Bilgin, P.While IR's Eurocentric limits are usually acknowledged, what those limits mean for theorizing about the international is seldom clarified. In The Global Transformation, Buzan and Lawson offer a 'composite approach' that goes some way towards addressing IR's Eurocentrism, challenging existing myths about the emergence and evolution of the international system and society. This paper seeks to push the contribution made by Buzan and Lawson in two further directions: first, by underscoring the need to adopt a deeper understanding of Eurocentrism; and second, by highlighting how this understanding helps us recognize what is missing from IR theorizing - conceptions of the international by 'others' who also constitute the international. I illustrate this point by focussing on a landmark text on Ottoman history, Ortayll's The Longest Century of the Empire.Item Open Access Individual and societal dimensions of security(Oxford University Press, 2003) Bilgin, P.Despite the prevalence of state-based approaches to security studies during the Cold War, alternative ways of thinking about security-focusing on the individual and society-also developed during this time period. However, in the post-Cold War era the primacy of the state in considerations of security has come under increasing challenge from a variety of perspectives. In this essay, the development of the study of individual and societal dimensions of security is traced and discussed against the background of the end of the Cold War. The first part of the essay examines the evolution of thinking about individual and societal dimensions of security during the Cold War. The second part focuses on the post-Cold War revival in thinking about these aspects of security. The essay concludes by considering the future of world politics conceived of as "risk society" and the implications for individual and societal dimensions of security.Item Open Access The international political “sociology of a not so international discipline”(Oxford University Press, 2009-09-01) Bilgin, P.[No abstract available]Item Open Access International politics of women's (in)security: rejoinder to Mary Caprioli(Sage Publications Ltd., 2004) Bilgin, P.[No abstract available]Item Open Access Introduction(Routledge, 2016) Guillaume, X.; Bilgin, P.; Guillaume, X.; Bilgin, PınarItem Open Access Is the ‘Orientalist’ past the future of Middle East studies?(Routledge, 2004) Bilgin, P.[No abstract available]Item Open Access Item Open Access Making Turkey’s transformation possible: claiming ‘security-speak’—not Desecuritization!(Routledge, 2007-12) Bilgin, P.There is an emerging consensus in the literature that considers Turkey’s post‐1999 transformation a consequence of AKP‐led efforts directed at challenging the ‘securityness’ of issues. The present article argues that change became possible not through ‘desecuritization’, but owing to some societal actors claiming ‘security‐speak’ to frame other issues as ‘threats to Turkey’s future’, and pointing to Turkey’s accession to the European Union as a solution that would help stabilize its foreign relations as well as the economy and provide an anchor for reform.
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