Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

3 results

  • Introduction

  • David A. Welch, University of Waterloo, Ontario
  • Book:
    Security
    Published online:
    18 August 2022
    Print publication:
    25 August 2022, pp 1-9

  • Summary

    As a species, we spend a great deal of time, energy, and money on security. The world’s military budgets alone totalled more than $1.9 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020, an average of 6.0 percent of government spending and 2.0 percent of Gross Domestic Product.1 The United States accounts for more than a third of the total all by itself and spends upward of $70 billion on foreign and military intelligence (a figure that excludes black budget expenditures).2 Add in spending on border controls, coast guards, and funding for national security–related research and development across a variety of fields, and it is clear that many countries invest very heavily indeed in protecting against foreign threats.

  • 5 - Cultural Security

  • David A. Welch, University of Waterloo, Ontario
  • Book:
    Security
    Published online:
    18 August 2022
    Print publication:
    25 August 2022, pp 125-158

  • Summary

    My aim in this chapter is to explore a somewhat loosely related set of referents that are all facets of a larger one that we might best characterize as ‘a way of social life.’ I will use ‘culture’ as a cover term for this larger referent, fully aware of the perennial difficulties of defining culture rigorously and speaking of it univocally.1

Security
  • A Philosophical Investigation
  • David A. Welch
  • Published online:
    18 August 2022
    Print publication:
    25 August 2022
  • How do we know when we are investing wisely in security? Answering this question requires investigating what things are worth securing (and why); what threatens them; how best to protect them; and how to think about it. Is it possible to protect them? How best go about protecting them? What trade-offs are involved in allocating resources to security problems? This book responds to these questions by stripping down our preconceptions and rebuilding an understanding of security from the ground up on the basis of a common-sense ontology and an explicit theory of value. It argues for a clear distinction between objective and subjective security threats, a non-anthropocentric understanding of security, and a particular hierarchy of security referents, looking closely at four in particular-the ecosphere, the state, culture, and individual human beings. The analysis will be of interest not only to students and scholars of International Relations, but also to practitioners.