Research Methods in Critical Security Studies, 2nd Edition

31 Theorizing the body in IR

Rosemary E. Shinko

DOI: 10.4324/9781003108016-36

Object of research

I have chosen to focus on the body in a new line of research, which explores various aspects of embodied resistance. My research responds to the question posed by Campbell and Dillon: “Where is the body in international relations?” (1993:12) This highlights the absence of a sustained theoretical focus on the body which is, after all, quite puzzling since international relations is fundamentally about bodies, i.e., bodies marked as citizens, terrorists, refugees, illegal immigrants, enemy combatants, and so forth.¹ Burke identifies security “as an interlocking system of knowledges, representations, practices and institutional forms that imagine, ...