Indra Widjaja

2017330200

Kajian Keamanan Kelas B

Critical Review:

Security Studies: An Introduction

Security is important for a country, but the study is subjective, we will not be able to interpret
it in absolute terms. But at an abstract level most reviewers of international relations agree with
defining security which involves reducing the level of threat to increase valuable values.

According to Simon Dalby, the internal dimension in the study of International Relations has
undergone a shift from a traditional perspective that is limited to war and peace which leads to
more and more aspects of human security. Security is no longer focused on relations between
countries, but also on society (Dalby, 2003: 102-103).

According to Barry Buzan in his book entitled: People State and Fear: An Agenda for
International Security Studies in Post-Cold War Era, that the security referred to in this
approach is not limited to security, but includes military, political, economic, social security
and environment, as described below:

- Military Security: Includes regarding defensive abilities and military perceptions of each
party's intentions.

- Political security: Includes the balance and stability of a country's organization or system
of government.

- Economic security: Includes access to financial resources and markets that are treated to
maintain the level of prosperity and strength of the state.

- Social Security: Includes security to maintain and produce traditional patterns in the fields
of language, religion and national identity.

- Environmental Safety: Includes the maintenance of the local environment as a major

support for human survival.

Although each sector has vocal points in the framework of security issues, and formulates its
own ways of determining the priorities of a country's main policies, but the factors themselves
are interrelated in its operations.
Security is most commonly associated with the improvement of threats to cherished values,
especially those which, left unchecked, threaten the survival of a particular referent object in
the near future. To be clear, although security and survival are often related, they are not
identical. Whereas survival is an existential condition, security involves the ability to pursue
valued political and social ambitions.

What will be the security issue? In one sense, every thinking individual on the planet operates
with a unique set of security priorities shaped, in part, by factors such as their sex, gender, age,
religious beliefs, class, race, nationality as well as where they are from, where they want to go,
and what they want to see happen in the future. In spite of our individual concerns and anxieties,
most of life’s insecurities are shared by other individuals and groups.

International Relation students are usually most familiar with the actions of states and the
debates about how they formulate and implement their security policies. Similarly, the actions
of international organizations have long been a staple of security studies courses. Less attention
has been devoted to analyzing a wide range of non-state actors and the roles they can play as
agents of both security and insecurity (but see Ekins 1992, Evangelista 1999, Keck and Sikkink
1998).

Critical Security Studies: An Introduction

The term critical can be used in various ways and evades informal definition. However, the
concept of security is in many ways no less contested. The once dominant association of the
concept of security with military threats and with the protection of the state or national security
the study of which has in turn provided the original foundation for disciplinary security studies
is no longer unquestioned.

Based on Baldwin (1997:10) a concept that is identifiable primarily by the lack of shared
agreement over its meaning. It is this space for ambiguity and contestation that in turn opens
the way for critical approaches to security. The concept of security itself contested, yet it also
remains central to our understanding of the world and has powerful effects when applied to
particular issues.

Problem solving and critical theory can also be distinguished by their approaches to knowledge
(Cox 1981). Whereas problem solving theory assumes that scholars an attain and produce
knowledge of the world in an objective a value neutral fashion, critical theory assumes that
because academic analysts are necessarily surrounded within the social world they see to
analyze, knowledge has an inherently social character. Hence there is no easy distinction that
can be made between facts and values itself.

Conclusion

As seen above, security nowadays focused on the environment, social back then, security was
all about war. Why security is now modernized because new ideologies have born to the world
so people can have their own perspective of security itself. As seen in the first paragraph is that
security is important but the study itself is subjective. Comparing to critical security studies,
proponents of securitization theory (such as Barry Buzan), acknowledge the broadening of
security beyond traditional military issues to include environmental, economic, society and
political sectors, but they have tried to develop an analytical framework for judging what is
and what is not a security issue in each of these sectors.