Rethinking the Concept of Threat: Threat Studies and the Limits of Security

Yıl 2025, Cilt: 7 Sayı: 2, 148 - 178, 07.10.2025

Mehmet Recai Uygur , Fatma Sever

https://doi.org/10.53451/ijps.1683424

Öz

This paper lays out Threat Studies as an emerging sub-discipline of International Relations and Security Studies. It breaks from the conventional reactive, state-centric approaches that dominate Security Studies by proposing an interdisciplinary model that, instead, analyzes how threats are constructed, perceived, and mobilized politically, economically, technologically, and environmentally. Drawing upon critical perspectives, discourse and political psychology, systems theory, and integration theory, the study argues that threats do not simply exist; they are crafted socially and politically, usually as mechanisms of domination, exclusion, and securitization. By analyzing the ontological and epistemological questions regarding threats, the paper provides a bounded classification distinguishing between material versus perceived threats, and direct versus indirect threats. The paper defends Threat Studies as an intellectually and strategically pertinent innovation that shifts security from militaristic reaction to ethical and preventive engagement with the causes of instability in a hyperconnected world.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Threat Studies , Securitization , Interdisciplinary Security , Integrated Threat

Rethinking the Concept of Threat: Threat Studies and the Limits of Security

Öz

Bu makale, Uluslararası İlişkiler ve Güvenlik Çalışmaları alanlarında ortaya çıkan yeni bir alt disiplin olarak Tehdit Çalışmaları’nı ortaya koymaktadır. Güvenlik Çalışmaları’nda egemen olan geleneksel, tepki odaklı ve devlet merkezli yaklaşımlardan koparak; tehditlerin nasıl inşa edildiğini, nasıl algılandığını ve siyasi, ekonomik, teknolojik ve çevresel boyutlarda nasıl seferber edildiğini analiz eden disiplinlerarası bir model önermektedir. Eleştirel perspektiflerden, söylem ve siyasal psikolojiden, sistem teorisinden ve entegrasyon teorisinden yararlanan çalışma, tehditlerin basitçe var olmadığını; sosyal ve siyasal olarak, genellikle tahakküm, dışlama ve güvenlikleştirme mekanizmaları olarak kurgulandığını savunmaktadır. Tehditlere ilişkin ontolojik ve epistemolojik soruları ele alarak, maddi ve algısal tehditler ile doğrudan ve dolaylı tehditler arasında sınırlı bir sınıflandırma sunmaktadır. Makale, güvenliği militarist tepkiden çıkarıp etik ve önleyici bir angajmana dönüştürerek, istikrarsızlığın nedenlerine hiperbağlantılı bir dünyada yaklaşmayı amaçlayan Tehdit Çalışmaları’nı entelektüel ve stratejik açıdan önemli bir yenilik olarak savunmaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Tehdit Çalışmaları , Güvenlikleştirme , Disiplinlerarası Güvenlik , Bütünleşik Tehdit

Kaynakça

• Andreas, Peter. Redrawing the Line: Borders and Security in the Twenty-First Century. International Security 28, no. 2 (2003): 78–111.
• Aradau, Claudia, and Rens van Munster. "Governing Terrorism Through Risk: Taking Precautions, (Un)Knowing the Future." European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 1 (2007): 89–115.
• Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt. Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001.
• Baldwin, David A. "The Concept of Security." Review of International Studies 23, no. 1 (1997): 5–26.
• Bigo, Didier. "Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease." Alternatives 27, no. 1_suppl (2002): 63–92.
• Booth, Ken. Theory of World Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• Butler, Robin. The Butler Report: Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction. London: The Stationery Office, 2004.
• Buzan, Barry. People, States & Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.
• Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998.
• Chomsky, Noam. Deterring Democracy. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992.
• Dalby, Simon. Security and Environmental Change. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009.
• Deibert, Ronald. Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society. Toronto: House of Anansi, 2019.
• Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
• Duckitt, John. "A Dual-Process Cognitive-Motivational Theory of Ideology and Prejudice." Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 33 (2001): 41–113.
• Fetzer, Joel S. Public Attitudes Toward Immigration in the United States, France, and Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• Fidler, David P. SARS, Governance and the Globalization of Disease. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
• Floyd, Rita. Security and the Environment: Securitisation Theory and US Environmental Security Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• Floyd, Rita, and Richard A. Matthew, eds. Environmental Security: Approaches and Issues. London: Routledge, 2013.
• Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
• Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78. Translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
• Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
• Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Originally published 1807.
• Herz, John H. "Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma." World Politics 2, no. 2 (1950): 157–180. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Huysmans, Jef. The Politics of Insecurity: Fear, Migration and Asylum in the EU. London: Routledge, 2006.
• Hussain, Nasser. The Jurisprudence of Emergency: Colonialism and the Rule of Law. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.
• Jackson, Richard. Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics and Counter-Terrorism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005.
• Jervis, Robert. Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
• Keohane, Robert O., and Joseph S. Nye. Power and Interdependence. 4th ed. Boston: Longman, 2011.
• Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Picador, 2007.
• Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume I. Translated by Ben Fowkes. London: Penguin Classics, 1990. Originally published 1867.
• McCauley, Clark, and Sophia Moskalenko. Friction: How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Mearsheimer, John J. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.
• Morgenthau, Hans J. Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948.
• Mueller, John, and Mark G. Stewart. Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
• Neocleous, Mark. Critique of Security. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
• Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
• Pape, Robert A. Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. New York: Random House, 2005. Singer, P. W. Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.
• Stephan, Walter G., and Cookie W. Stephan. "An Integrated Threat Theory of Prejudice." In Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination, edited by Stuart Oskamp, 23–45. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000.
• Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.
• Sunstein, Cass R. #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.
• Tajfel, Henri, and John C. Turner. "The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior." In Psychology of Intergroup Relations, edited by Stephen Worchel and William G. Austin, 7–24. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1986.
• Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York: Random House, 2007.
• Thucydides. The History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Rex Warner. London: Penguin Books, 1972.
• Tooze, Adam. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. New York: Viking Press, 2018.
• Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. "Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases." Science 185, no. 4157 (1974): 1124–1131.
• Waever, Ole. "Securitization and Desecuritization." In On Security, edited by Ronnie D. Lipschutz, 46–86. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
• Waltz, Kenneth N. Theory of International Politics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979.
• Wendt, Alexander. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: PublicAffairs, 2019.