Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War

by Hansen; Lene

• ISBN13: 9780415335751
• ISBN10: 0415335752
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2006-04-04
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This important text offers a full and detailed account of how to use discourse analysis to study foreign policy making. It provides an in-depth discussion of the methodology of discourse analysis and a poststructuralist theory of the relationship between identity and foreign policy. Part I examines the concept of identity and the intertextual relationship between official foreign policy discourse and oppositional and media discourses. It explains how genres can be as significant as having authority and knowledge when authors and politicians seek to establish themselves. Lene Hansen also presents and explains a theory of the construction of identity in foreign policy debates and demonstrates how competing discourses destabilize each other and how the dynamic of self versus other, pervades the process of foreign policy making. Part II applies discourse analytical theory and methodology to a detailed analysis of the Western debate on the Bosnian war. This analysis includes a historical genealogy ofthe Western construction of the Balkans as well as readings of the official British and American policies, the debate in the House of Commons and the US Senate, Western media representations, academic debates and travel writing and autobiography. Providing an introduction to discourse analysis and critical perspectives on international relations this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of international relations, security studies and research methodology.

Author Biography

Lene Hansen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	xii
Series Editor's preface	xiii
Preface	xvi
Acknowledgements	xxi
Introduction	1	(14)
Poststructuralism and the field of IR	2	(3)
Representations as 'real world' research questions	5	(2)
The scope of foreign policy analysis: situating official discourse	7	(2)
Epistemological challenges	9	(2)
Methodology and the status of the 'case plus study'	11	(1)
The content of this book	11	(4)
PART I The theory and methodology of discourse analysis	15	(78)
Discourse analysis, identity, and foreign policy	17	(20)
The ontology of linguistic construction	18	(5)
Discursive epistemology and relational identity	23	(2)
The impossibility of causality	25	(3)
A theoretical model of combinability	28	(3)
Challenges, changes, and facts	31	(2)
Security as discourse	33	(4)
Beyond the Other: analyzing the complexity of identity	37	(18)
Otherness, difference, and the construction of Selves	38	(3)
Linking and differentiation: the methodology of reading	41	(5)
Reading political identity: spatial, temporal, and ethical constructions	46	(5)
From texts to basic discourses	51	(4)
Intertextualizing foreign policy: genres, authority, and knowledge	55	(18)
Political intertextuality	56	(3)
Three intertextual models and their research agendas	59	(6)
Constructing authority: power, knowledge, and narrativity	65	(3)
Beyond objectivity: narrative knowledge and literary non-fiction	68	(5)
Research designs: asking questions and choosing texts	73	(20)
Developing research designs	74	(8)
Making textual selections: key texts and general material	82	(5)
The Western debate on Bosnia: a detailed research design	87	(6)
PART II A discourse analysis of the Western debate on the Bosnian war	93	(128)
The basic discourses in the Western debate over Bosnia	95	(20)
`The Balkans' of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries	97	(9)
The Balkan discourse	106	(5)
The Genocide discourse	111	(4)
Humanitarian responsibility versus 'lift and strike': tracing trans-Atlantic policy discourses	115	(33)
A timeline of key events: developments on the ground and the policy responses of the West	116	(7)
The humanitarianism of Western Europe	123	(9)
Unity in diversity: the American debate on 'lift and strike'	132	(13)
Western policy discourses and analytical conclusions	145	(3)
Writing the past, predicting the future: travelers, realism, and the politics of civilization	148	(31)
Balkan Ghosts and the power of intertextual constructions	150	(6)
Reading Rebecca West: pro-Serbianism reassessed	156	(8)
Conceptual intertextuality: 'civilizations' and 'ancient hatred'	164	(12)
Intertextual conclusions and Balkan discourse variations	176	(3)
The failure of the West? The evolution of the Genocide discourse and the ethics of inaction	179	(32)
A Witness to Genocide: from reporting facts to advocating policy	181	(3)
Variations on Genocide: Europe, Serbia, and gender	184	(8)
Poststructuralism and David Campbell's National Deconstruction	192	(5)
Memorializing negotiations	197	(12)
Conclusions from Genocide: variations, policy, and genre	209	(2)
Conclusion	211	(10)
The politics of discourse	211	(2)
Identity and foreign policy debates	213	(2)
The intertextuality of discourse	215	(2)
The boundaries and methodology of discourse	217	(4)
Notes	221	(13)
References	234	(17)
Index	251