Rethinking Empirical Analysis in Security Studies

Abstract

The article offers a re-conceptualisation of the basic conceptual framework of empirical analysis in Security Studies: the “security complex”, as outlined by Buzan et al. in their seminal works (Security: A New Framework for Analysis, 1998, and Regions and Powers, 2003). Especially the way security complexes were interpreted in the 2003 book of Buzan and Wæver, it may be criticised for its unduly strong state-centricity, its focus on the military sector of analysis, and its approach to spatiality as simply a matter of regionality (and finding the relevant regions of security interactions). Here an issue-specific approach to security complexes is proposed instead, in detail, to enable us to deal with all issue areas relevant to Security Studies, to move away from state-centricity, and to see spatiality in the form of network structures rather – where spatiality may be meaningfully interpreted, which is not always or necessarily the case.