Research Methods in Critical Security Studies: An Introduction

This new textbook surveys new and emergent methods for doing research in critical security studies, thereby filling a large gap in the literature of this emerging field. Methods in New Security Studies is the first book to set out clearly and carefully how to design an interpretivist research project: it clearly compares the object of a research project, the key concepts, the modes of data collection, the data that can be interpreted, the key relations that each method can map, and the best fit for each method. New or critical security studies is growing as a field, but still lacks a clear methodology. Because the main foci of study in this field are so diverse (i.e. usually on culture, practices, language, or bodies), there is little coherence or conversation between these four schools or approaches. Further, no existing text addresses either ethnography or the corporeal in security studies clearly. The structure of this book is itself pedagogic: after an introductory section setting out the salient aspects of the method, the authors describe their own successful research project using that method. Consequently, this book represents a wide range of possible, successful approaches without falling into dogmatism. The volume brings together 33 different contributors from a variety of countries and disciplinary backgrounds, each of whom has successfully completed the research design described in the book. The volume has clear checklists and tables for the teaching and design of new research project, new material on and examples of new approaches to critical IR (namely ethnographic and corporeal), and a structure that allows for the comparison and emulation of research design within a methodological school. This book will be essential reading for upper-level students and researchers in the field of critical security studies, and of much interest to students of sociology, ethnography and IR.