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DOI: 10.1177/096701060403500315
2004 35: 357 Security Dialogue
Kyle Grayson
A Challenge to the Power over Knowledge of Traditional Security Studies

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International Peace Research Institute, Oslo

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- Sep 20, 2004 Version of Record >>

by hetri anggara on October 13, 2013 sdi.sagepub.com Downloaded from by hetri anggara on October 13, 2013 sdi.sagepub.com Downloaded from
I feel compelled to begin with reservations
about the politics that is imbricated in any
definitional discussion of the concept of
human security, a politics that both the
mainstream of the field and the policy
community would prefer to remain hid-
den behind the dictates of technical ration-
ality. Thus, it is imperative that the
aspiration to power that is inherent in any
definitional claim be exposed and debated
in terms of both what is being positively
affirmed as comprising human security
and what is concurrently disqualified;
there must be analytic sensitivity given
to the people, places and things that are
marginalized when an expert claims to
be providing a precise/scientific/work-
able definition of human security that is
of practical use (Foucault, 2003: 10). In
other words, our attention must not
stray from the power that is constitutive
of the power/knowledge of human
security.
More importantly, rather than lament-
ing the lack of workable definitions, we
should be more concerned with security
studies pathological obsession with the
quest for definitional universality and
practicality that serves to circumvent poli-
tics (as an ethical and moral enterprise
concerned with the legitimacy of domi-
nant relations of power) in the discussion
of what security can and should be in
an era of shared global vulnerabilities.
Thus, the definitional project of security
studies the discipline is a part and parcel
of the disciplining of human security
the concept. By discursively discounting
critical definitions of human security that
seek to transform rather than problem
solve as unworkable, we can clearly see
the retention of the impulse to unreflex-
ively meet knowledge needs expressed
by the policy community, needs that are
themselves attempts to disengage politi-
cally by commandeering the academic
enterprise towards the reinforcement of
analytic frameworks that are amenable to
the status quo.
With the mainstreaming of the concept
through the offering of workable defini-
tions (in terms of dominant understand-
ings), one loses the ability to question
broader political, social and economic
dynamics that, while central to the subject
of human security, remain disturbingly
peripheral to the discipline of security
studies and its targeted policy demo-
graphic. Rather than revealing a concep-
tual weakness, the refusal to succumb to
the political trappings of the disciplines
definitional project contributes to the
critical transformative ethos that is the very
strength of progressive visions of human
security.
*Kyle Grayson is a Canadian Consortium
for Human Security post-Doctoral Fellow
at the Centre for International and
Security Studies, York University.
What is Human Security? 357
A Challenge to the Power over Knowledge
of Traditional Security Studies
KYLE GRAYSON*
York University, Toronto
01_Security Dialogue 35_3 8/27/04 3:17 PM Page 357