ECPR

Install the app

Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.

Just tap Share then “Add to Home Screen”

Putting Critique to Work: Ethics in EU Security Research

Kristoffer Lidén
International Peace Research Institute, Oslo
Kristoffer Lidén
International Peace Research Institute, Oslo

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that security research, a loosely defined field of security-related research and development activities that involves peer groups such as policy-makers, industrial companies, researchers from technical disciplines, and end-users, presents a tangible way for critical security studies to put critique to work through the mandatory ethical coverage that projects must be subjected to. Applied ethics thereby speaks to several core issues in the critical security studies agenda (i.e. turning abstract considerations of critique into forms of tangible cooperation; engaging exoteric communities; placing normative questions about security within concrete contexts of its imagination and production). It does however at the same time face considerable challenges that result from its location in the middle of multiple stakes and political ambitions (i.e. economic arguments; technological rationales; the demands of security professionals). We discuss some of these challenges and present a number of formal and informal ways to address them in concrete EU security research environments.