Towards a global security studies: what can looking at China tell us about the concept of security?
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661231176990 |
| Author | Dr Jonna Nyman |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
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JR
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https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661231176990
European Journal of
International Relations
2023, Vol. 29(3) 673 –697
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661231176990
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
Towards a global security
studies: what can looking at
China tell us about the concept
of security?
Dr Jonna Nyman
University of Sheffield, UK
Abstract
Existing scholarship has demonstrated that theorising about security is Eurocentric. This
leaves us with a partial account of the concept of security, which is presented as universal.
This in turn generates explanatory problems because we are only seeing part of the
picture. Yet there have been few attempts to move beyond critiques of Eurocentrism
to examine the concept of security ‘elsewhere’. This paper takes China as its starting
point, asking: what can looking at China tell us about security? In answering this question,
the paper makes two contributions. First, it presents new empirical findings, building a
conceptual history of security in China. Drawing on 140 key texts dating 1926–2022, the
paper traces the emergence of the concept of security in China and its evolution through
three explicit security concepts. Drawing on postcolonial insights it demonstrates that
these concepts are hybrid, evolving out of multiple domestic and international influences.
They have similarities as well as differences with the Eurocentric concept that dominates
International Security Studies (ISS) and produce a discrete approach towards security
that has been overlooked in a discipline that uses ‘Europe to explain Asia’. Second,
considering these insights, the paper demonstrates that the universal concept of security
that underpins theorising in ISS is partial and misleading. Differences in security concepts
matter for theorising security and for understanding security policy. Consequently, I
argue that we need to provincialize the concept of security: a truly global security studies
is of necessity a provincial one attuned to difference and similarity.
Keywords
Post-colonialism, international history, eurocentrism, international relations, security,
critical security studies
Corresponding author:
Jonna Nyman, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, Modular Teaching
Village, Northumberland Road, Sheffield S10 2TU, UK.
Email: j.nyman@sheffield.ac.uk
1176990EJT0010.1177/13540661231176990European Journal of International RelationsNyman
research-article2023
Article
674 European Journal of International Relations 29(3)
Security has become a central concept for understanding the contemporary international
system. Scholars of International Relations have theorised its importance since the incep-
tion of the field: the idea of ‘national security’ lies at the heart of the discipline (Neocleous,
2000: 8). Existing scholarship has demonstrated that theorising about security is
Eurocentric: it ‘derives its core categories and assumptions about world politics from a
particular understanding of European experience’ (Barkawi and Laffey, 2006: 330). It
privileges some experiences over others and considers them both as universal and as
‘fact’ (Sabaratnam, 2020: 10). In the words of Barkawi and Laffey (2006), ‘conventional
security studies . . . is a product of Western power’ (p. 352). This causes three problems.
First, it leaves us with a partial account of the history and concept of security, which is
presented as universal. Second, this then generates explanatory problems because we are
only seeing part of the picture: the field ‘mistakes “Western” experiences for the univer-
sal’ and so fails to see different insecurities experienced elsewhere (Bilgin, 2010: 619).
Indeed, the field ‘provides few categories for making sense of the historical experiences
of . . . most of the world’s population’ (Barkawi and Laffey, 2006: 332) – and for how
those experiences have in turn shaped the world as we know it. This limits the disci-
pline’s ability to understand and explain international politics. Third, presenting particu-
lar experiences as universal has broader political implications: it reflects and reproduces
existing power (im)balances. This much we know. However, there have been few
attempts to move beyond critiques of Eurocentrism to examine the concept of security
‘elsewhere’ and to consider what these insights reveal about the future direction for the
study of security. That is the focus of this paper.
Taking this problem seriously requires a research design that centres an in-depth case
study. The concept of security has never been neutral: it has always been laden with his-
tory and culture (see Neocleous, 2006). This paper introduces China as an alternative
starting point, to retrace security and its emergence in a different geographical context,
in order to see what that can tell us about the concept itself. Since taking power in 2013,
president Xi Jinping has placed security at the heart of the political project. Announcing
a new ‘total concept of national security’ with ‘Chinese characteristics’ in response to
‘unprecedented challenges’ facing China today (Renmin Ribao, 2014), his security doc-
trine is enshrined in the Chinese constitution, illustrating its importance. Security matters
in contemporary Chinese politics, but China fits neither the profile of the EuroAmerican
experience that forms the basis of existing theory, nor the developing/Third-World/post-
colonial experience that forms the basis of postcolonial work in International Security
Studies (ISS).1 This makes China a particularly salient alternative starting point.2 The
paper traces the emergence and evolution of the concept of security in China over the
past century, writing a counter-history of security. In the process, I ask: what can looking
at China tell us about security?
In answering this question, the paper makes two contributions. First, it presents new
empirical findings, building a conceptual history of security in China. Because political
science has tended to favour grand narratives, sweeping assumptions have often gained
more attention than nuanced empirical analyses of Chinese history (Chong, 2014: 941–
942). The paper uses conceptual history as method,3 an approach that aims to show ‘the
political importance of conceptual change’, contributing to ‘historical thinking about
politics . . . [and] to the activity of political theorising’ (Farr, 1989: 37–38). The analysis
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