Human and Critical Security Studies

Key information

Module code: 15DISD213
Credits: 30
Department: Department of Development Studies

Module overview

This is an Online and Distance Learning (ODL) module

The Human and Critical Security Studies elective examines the meanings, mechanisms and agents of security, acknowledging shifts from the traditional notion of national security to forms of Human Security and critiques of the state. This module investigates processes and phenomena that pose direct threats to groups of people and, in doing so, potentially destabilise or aggravate situations. Famine, the oil trade and AIDS undermine people physically, politically and psychologically, and on occasions result in further forms of insecurity as people resist, retaliate or take advantage of volatile situations. Your study will also incorporate analysis of contingent – and differentiating – social factors such as age, gender, class and identity and the way that these shape and are shaped by experiences of security.

Academic literature is derived predominantly from Development Studies, Political Science and International Relations. This provides varied analysis of the nature and function of security policy, including policies relating to human security. In addition, there is a rapidly expanding academic literature linking specific threats to processes of vulnerability, insecurity, terror and globalisation which is accompanied by literature by pressure groups working on the issues concerned with AIDS, famine, corporate responsibility, the environment and human rights. The UN, itself heavily involved in forging the meanings of security, has produced documents relating to health, climate change and other elements covered in the course.

Topics include:

Theorising critical security
Human security: freedom from fear/ freedom from want
Famine and food security
Citizenship & the state
Migration
Private security: hired guns & gated communities
Oil economy
The ‘development project’ and the security agenda
The HIV/AIDS pandemic
Climate change
Terrorism in the Global South
Diplomacy and the majority world

Objectives and learning outcomes of the module

On successful completion of this module, a student will be able to:

Understand and elaborate on concepts from critical and human security studies;
Identify and examine non-military processes and phenomena affecting security;
Demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of how various forms of security interact;
Explain the roles of a diverse set of actors operating in the field of security;
Analyse ways in which security is differently experienced between and within groups;
Assess risks and vulnerabilities within security agendas;
Deploy academic, UN and pressure group literature on security in constructing arguments.