Module Identifier IPM5330  
Module Title SECURITY AND IDENTITY  
Academic Year 2002/2003  
Co-ordinator Dr Mike Williams  
Semester Intended for use in future years  
Next year offered N/A  
Next semester offered N/A  
Course delivery Seminars / Tutorials   1 x 2 hour seminar per week  
Assessment Semester Exam   3 Hours To be examined in Semester Two.   30%  
  Semester Assessment   Seminar presentation Presentation:   10%  
  Semester Assessment   Major esay proposal Course Work: 250 words   10%  
  Semester Assessment   Essay: 750 words   20%  
  Semester Assessment   Essay: 3,000 words   30%  
  Supplementary Exam   Students may, subject to Faculty approval, have the opportunity to resit this module, normally during the supplementary examination period. For further clarification please contact the Teaching Programme Administrator in the Department of International Politics.    

Learning outcomes

At the end of this module, participants should be able to:

- Discuss the historically shifting nature of the relationship between social identity and organized violence.
- Examine the development of forms of knowledge, media and representation, and relate them to the conduct of war.
- Assess the implications of the shift from a print culture to an electronic one for the relationship between culture and war.
- Examine the relationship between the cultural dimensions of globalization and contemporary forms of conflict.

Brief description

This module examines the relationship between security, identity, and politics.

Aims

Whereas the relationship between security and identity has often been taken as one in which war is an instrument wielded by pre-given actors or subjects, we here approach it as an element and outcome of social practices through which individuals and collectivities are constituted. The relationship between culture and strategy is conceived more broadly than in approaches usually identified with the analysis of 'strategic culture', since the course examines the broad cultural structures through which actions, objectives, and relationships constituting organized violence are produced and transformed. At the center of this examination is an appraisal of the ways in which representations of knowledge and identity are inextricable from understanding the role of war and violence in contemporary politics.

Content

The course examines the historical emergence of specifically modern cultural forms and their connection to identifiably modern forms of war and violence. Finally, the course examines current transformations in the social and representational realms (accelerated flows of media, capital, and people, for example) in order to develop an understanding of contemporary relationships between war and politics. Traditional print-textual approaches to the study of war and politics will in this latter section be supplemented by video presentations aimed at uncovering and critically evaluating the shifting place of war and violence in the construction (and destruction) of political orders.

Transferable skills

Students will have the opportunity to develop, practice and test a wide range of transferable skills which will help them to understand, conceptualise and evaluate examples and ideas. Throughout the course, students should practice and enhance their reading, comprehension and thinking skills. In seminars, case- and problem-based scenarios will allow students to develop their analytic and debating skills, as well as enhancing teamwork capacities and presentational abilities. Essay writing will encourage students to practice their independent research, writing, and IT skills, and the examination will test these skills under time constraint conditions.

Reading Lists

Books
Jutta Weldes. (1999) Constructing National Interests. University of Minnesota
Guy Debord. (1995) The Society of the Spectacle. Zone Books
H Alker and M Shapiro, eds.. (1996) Challenging Boundaries. University of Minnesota