The International in Security, Security in the International

International Relations continues to come under fire for its relative absence of international perspectives. In this exciting new volume, Pinar Bilgin encourages both students and scholars to consider both why and how non-Western, non-core geocultural sites allow us to think differently about key aspects of global politics.

Seeking to further debates surrounding thinking beyond the 'West/non-West' divide, this work analyzes how scholarship on and conceptions of the international outside core contexts are tied up with peripheral actors’ search for security, conceived not only in terms of material but also non-material dimensions. The proposed volume locates the emergence/persistence in the periphery of standard approaches to IR in peripheral actors’ conceptions of the international and the ways in which such conceptions are tied up with their search for security. Accordingly, the book proposes to look at core/periphery dynamics not only in terms of the production of knowledge in the production of IR scholarship, or material threats, but also peripheral actors' conceptions of the international in terms of 'standards of civilization' and their more contemporary guises.

Structuring the theoretical argument around cases taken from both Turkey and beyond, each chapter makes a theoretical point and illustrates this further in a spotlight section that further illustrates the point to aid student learning. A geniuinely innovative contribution to this rapidly emerging field within IR, this work will be essential reading for students and scholars of critical security, international relations theory and non-western international relations.

Pinar Bilgin is Associate Professor and Head of Department of International Relations at Bilkent University, Turkey. She is the author of Regional Security in the Middle East: a Critical Perspective (Routledge, 2005). She is an Associate Member of Turkish Academy of Sciences, and Associate Editor of journals Security Dialogue and International Political Sociology. She has served as Program Chair (2011-12) and Chair (2012-13) of the International Political Sociology section of the International Studies Association. Her research agenda focuses on critical approaches to security studies.