Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity / Edition 2

by David Campbell

Overview

A newly revised edition of this bold and important work.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has faced the challenge of reorienting its foreign policy to address post-Cold War conditions. In this new edition of a groundbreaking work-one of the first to bring critical theory into dialogue with more traditional approaches to international relations-David Campbell provides a fundamental reappraisal of American foreign policy, with a new epilogue to address current world affairs and the burgeoning focus on culture and identity in the study of international relations.

Extending recent debates in international relations, Campbell shows how perceptions of danger and difference work to establish the identity of the United States. He demonstrates how foreign policy, far from being an expression of a given society, constitutes state identity through the interpretation of danger posed by others.

“This is an intriguing book. . . . It not only goes behind foreign policy as such, to look at its domestic roots, but also digs deeply into the very nature of those roots themselves. . . . By moving us beyond, or behind, the usual starting point of foreign policy, this study performs the signal service of inviting us to reflect more deeply on how what we think we are affects how we act in the world.” International Journal

ISBN 0-8166-3144-1 Paper $19.95x COBE/EU

312 pages 5 7/8 x 9 September

Translation inquiries: University of Minnesota Press

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816631445
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	09/01/1998
Edition description:	Revised, Revised
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	13 Years

About the Author

David Campbell is professor of international politics at the University of Newcastle, UK, and the author of National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia, also published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Table of Contents

Preface

A note about the revised edition

Introduction

1. Provocations of our time

2. Rethinking foreign policy

3. Foreign policy and identity

4. Foreign policy and difference

5. Imagining America

6. Writing security

7. Rewriting security

8. The politics of theorizing identity

Epilogue: The disciplinary politics of theorising identity

Editorial Reviews

Campbell (political science, Johns Hopkins U.) transcends the current debate about reorienting US foreign policy in light of The Evil Empire's collapse, and reappraises the fundamental underpinnings of foreign policy in a way that could disturb many people. He argues that foreign policy is not the expression of an existing society, but rather creates that society by naming external threats. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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