Critical Security Studies and World Politics. Edited by Ken
Booth. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005. 336p. $62.00 cloth,
$24.50 paper.
Ken Booth has tasked himself and his contributors (particularly
chapters by S. Smith, A. Linklater, H. Alker, and R. Wyn Jones) with
sorting out the menagerie of theoretical criticisms often identified as
either critical or in some way as alternatives to realism, including not
only those that directly engage questions of
security—“securitization” theorists and
constructivists—but also the various “post” (modern,
structural, positivist, colonial) theoretical critiques. Though on the
whole the book rejects both realism and poststructuralism, the
contributors do find some common ground with and among
“critical,” “post,” and “alternative”
writers on the question of improving the human condition (as an implicit
goal of criticism), and applauds those who engage ethical issues to the
extent that criticism is undertaken in order to reveal and confront, if
not overcome, oppression.