Rethinking Security guide to research

November 2024: Researching Security that Matters to You: A Guide to Citizen Social Science

Why do we need to do more and more research on ‘security’?

Because it is a word that we all use in many different contexts all the time, but we might not think about what we mean by it.

Because it is a value-laden word, used from the highest level of government policymaking to people in the street, we have to check what ‘values’ lie behind it exactly – and whether we agree or disagree with them.

When Security Studies started as a university discipline in the 1940s, it was considered part of International Relations. The main goal of academic research during the Cold War times was to analyse the role of various states in the big world order, some being more militarily powerful than others. For them, ‘state security’ meant the relative strength or weakness of states as military powers in relation to other states. Their ultimate goal was to preserve the status quo – and prevent a nuclear war, a huge existential threat of the time.

Current UK government understands security strategy in a similar way, albeit they call it ‘national security’ instead of ‘state security’. The latest security review, called the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, and its 2023 ‘Refresh’, set out government ‘security’ priorities for the next decade. This has seen a big boost to military spending at the expense of development and diplomacy, and commits the UK to taking part in great power struggles in both Europe and elsewhere in the world.

But security is not just that – or we could even say, security is not THAT.

Rethinking Security, a network of UK-based organisations, academics and activists who work for a just and peaceful world, teamed up with researchers from Coventry University to build up the Alternative Security Review. This research project has collected information on what security can mean beyond nation-states being in a power struggle and in a race for military supremacy.

What does security mean to PEOPLE? What does it mean to YOU?

One of the most important goals of this research project has been to change the way in which UK security policy is generated, building on an approach that promotes peace, human wellbeing, and environmental sustainability, and the inclusion of the public in the process

Read more: https://rethinkingsecurity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/CSS-workbook-1.pdf