Based on the experiences of Mayan women, Stern critically re-considers the connections between security, subjectivity and identity. By engaging in a careful reading of how Mayan women "speak" security in relation to the different contexts that inform their lives, she explores the multiplicity of both identity and security, and questions the main story of security imbedded in the modern "paradox of sovereignty."

This book rethinks security theory from a feminist perspective – uniquely, it engages feminism, security, and strategic studies to provide a distinct feminist approach to security studies. The volume explicitly works toward an opening up of security studies that would allow for feminist (and other) narratives to be recognized and taken seriously as security narratives. To make this possible, it presents a feminist reading of security studies that aims to invigorate the debate and radicalize critical security studies. Since feminism is a political project, and security studies are, at their base, about particular visions of the political and their attendant institutions, this is of necessity a political intervention. The book works through and beyond security studies to explore possible spaces where an opening of security, necessary to make way for feminist insights, can take place. While it develops and illustrates a feminist narrative approach to security, it is also intended as an intervention that challenges the politics of security and the meanings for security legitimized in existing practices. This book provides develops a comprehensive framework for the emerging field of feminist security studies and will be of great interest to students and scholars of feminist IR, critical security studies, gender studies and IR and security studies in general.

This volume analyzes crises in International Relations (IR) in an innovative way. Rather than conceptualizing a crisis as something unexpected that has to be managed, the contributors argue that a crisis needs to be analyzed within a wider context of change: when new discourses are formed, communities are (re)built, and new identities emerge. Focusing on Ukraine, the book explore various questions related to crisis and change, including: How are crises culturally and socially constructed? How do issues of agency and structure come into play in Ukraine? Which subjectivities were brought into existence by Ukraine crisis discourses? Chapters explore the participation of women in Euromaidan, identity shifts in the Crimean Tatar community and diaspora politics, discourses related to corruption, anti-Soviet partisan warfare, and the annexation of Crimea, as well as long distance impacts of the crisis.

This revised and updated second edition features over twenty new chapters and offers a wide-ranging collection of cutting-edge essays from leading scholars in the field of Security Studies. The field of Security Studies has undergone significant change during the past 20 years, and is now one of the most dynamic sub-disciplines within International Relations. This second edition has been significantly updated to address contemporary and emerging security threats with chapters on organised crime, migration and security, cyber-security, energy security, the Syrian conflict and resilience, amongst many others. Comprising articles by both established and up-and-coming scholars, The Routledge Handbook of Security Studies provides a comprehensive overview of the key contemporary topics of research and debate in the field of Security Studies. The volume is divided into four main parts: • Part I: Theoretical Approaches to Security • Part II: Security Challenges • Part III: Regional (In)Security • Part IV: Security Governance This new edition of the Handbook is a benchmark publication with major importance for both current research and the future of the field. It will be essential reading for all scholars and students of Security Studies, War and Conflict Studies, and International Relations.

Scholars in many of the disciplines surrounding politics explicitly utilize either a narrative perspective or a metaphor perspective (though rarely the two in combination) to analyze issues -- theoretical and practical, domestic and international -- in the broad field of politics. Among the topics they have studied are: competing metaphors for the state or nation which have been coined over the centuries in diverse cultures; the frequency with which communal and international conflicts are generated, at least in part, by the clashing religious and historical narratives held by opposing groups; the cognitive short-cuts employing metaphor by which citizens make sense of politics; the need for political candidates to project a convincing self-narrative; the extent to which the metaphors used to formulate social issues determine the policies which will be developed to resolve them; the failure of narratives around the security of the nation to take account of the individual experiences of women and children. This volume is the first in which eminent scholars from disciplines as diverse as social psychology, anthropology, political theory, international relations, feminist political science, and media studies, have sought to integrate the narrative and the metaphor perspectives on politics. It will appeal to any scholar interested in the many ways in which narrative and metaphor function in combination as cognitive and rhetorical instruments in discourse around politics.

In a world where there are few women politicians, Cambodia is still noticeable as a country where strong cultural and societal forces act to subjugate women and limit their political opportunities. However, in their everyday life, Cambodian women do try to improve their situation and increase their political power, not least via manifold strategies of resistance. This book focuses on Cambodian female politicians and the strategies they deploy in their attempts to destabilize the cultural boundaries and hierarchies that restrain them. In particular, the book focuses on how women use discourses and identities as means of resistance, a concept only recently of wide interest among scholars studying power. The value of this book is thus twofold: not only does it give a unique insight into the political struggles of Cambodian women but also offers new insights to studies of power.

Violence against Women in and beyond Conflict explores the processes and structures that underlie and contribute to sexual violence and internal displacement in armed conflict, utilizing extensive ethnographic research to provide cutting-edge insights. The author argues that the key to understanding violence against women lies at the intersection of transnational capital, race, and gender that not only contribute to its production but also to its persistence. The book uses the Colombian armed conflict as the primary case study but develops a broader framework for theorizing the relationship between the global political economy, the history of coloniality, and intersectional constructions of gender and race with regard to conflict and violence. It offers an understanding of violence against women as not isolated from, but part and a symptom of, a larger system of political, social, and economic inequality that is rooted in colonialism, and exploited and exacerbated by transnational capital relations. The author also shows how the state and non-state actors, most prominently paramilitaries, are involved in this relationship of violence. The book highlights implications for meaningful and sustainable peace in post-conflict contexts. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, gender studies, and conflict studies; as well as policymakers, (non)governmental organizations, and practitioners interested in conflict and security.