Durkheim and the Copenhagen school: a response to Buzan and Waever

Abstract

Rather than attempt to respond to the many points of detail raised in the discussion piece by Buzan and Wæver in the April 1997 issue of the Review, I shall address what I consider three central areas of dispute, and leave readers to judge whether the conclusion of my original paper, that Buzan's authorship in Wæver et al. subverts the thesis of his People, States and Fear, still holds.Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, ‘Slippery? Contradictory? Sociologically Untenable? The Copenhagen School Replies’, Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), pp. 241–50; Bill McSweeny, ‘Identity and Security: Buzan and the Copenhagen School’, Review of International Studies, 22 (1996), pp. 81–93; Ole Wæver, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup and Pierre Lemaitre with David Carlton et al., Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe (London, 1993); Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, 2nd edn (Hemel Hempstead, 1991). The three questions which are central, in my view, are the objectivism of the concept of identity; the misunderstanding of methodological individualism and its place in directing their line of analysis; and the impact of their ‘identity’ theses on Buzan's distinctions between strong and weak states and mature and immature anarchies. The first two points overlap with Buzan and Wæver's characterization of the dispute; the third is given minor attention by them, but it critically relates to the question of Buzan's inconsistency.Buzan and Wæver, ‘Slippery?’, pp. 241, 249.