Christine Agius

• PhD International Relations and Security, Department of Government, Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, University of Manchester, 2002.
• Senior Lecturer at Swedish Defence University

Bordering practices have been a central and controversial feature of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Closed borders, lockdowns, and restrictions on movement and individual “freedoms” have revived concepts of the biopolitical “state of exception” and state control. In this article, we argue that biopolitical critiques of responses to the pandemic fail to g...

This article proceeds from a critical analysis of gendered narratives of nationhood as manifested in far-right populist politics and discourses in response to major security challenges. We focus on how such narratives exemplify gendered nationalism and inform the discourses of populist political leaders and their followers, with a particular focus...

Ontological insecurity dominates the narratives of fear and anxiety that are perpetuated by populist and authoritarian regimes today. In these discourses and imaginings, specific ideas of ‘security’ are desired as a return to order or an imagined or idealized past. In this chapter, we focus on how those narratives regularly rely on gendered and col...

In the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the status of neutrality or military non-alignment is facing deeper challenges since its expected demise in the post–Cold War period. This article explores the gendered and emotional politics of neutrality and its relationship to peace and security. Neutrality has consistently been conceived as an irration...

COVID-19; critical security

This chapter examines the impact of social constructivism on Security Studies, and how it calls into question the assumed orthodoxy of rationalist approaches to security and the international system by asking how security and security threats are ‘socially constructed’. It focuses on the importance of social relations and why identity, norms, and c...

The Trump presidency ushered in a heightened sense of ontological insecurity in the US, based on a national self-narrative that portrayed an emasculated America. Trump promised a return the US to primacy by pursuing policies and practices that focused on border protection, militarisation, and the vilification of external others, while amplifying ra...

This review examines Australian foreign policy for July to December 2020 through the framework of uncertainty. It argues that the Morrison government's handling of relations with China and its significant defence boost with the Defence Strategic Update signal a desire to placate various domestic pressures while at the same time responding to intern...

After a 14-year gap, Australia’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper advanced a ‘comprehensive framework to advance Australia’s security and prosperity in a contested and competitive world’ (https://www.fpwhitepaper.gov.au/., v). Focused on regional stability, partnerships and global cooperation, it identifies ‘risks and opportunities’ in an altered ex...

The potential of sport-based approaches to contribute to wide-ranging development outcomes has been recognised across international policy declarations, most significantly in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. To realise this potential, it is essential to develop coherence between Sport for Development and Peace (SDP)-oriented policy with...

The potential of sport-based approaches to contribute to wide-ranging development outcomes has been recognised across international policy declarations, most significantly in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. To realise this potential, it is essential to develop coherence between Sport for Development and Peace (SDP)-oriented policy with...

In recent years, border tensions have characterised Swedish-Russian security relations in the form of simulated strikes and military exercises in the Baltic Sea region. In this article, we show that while security tensions ‘at the border’ may be present, a complex process of gendered bordering underwrites Swedish and Russian foreign and security po...

In assessing its two-year term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council (2013-14), Australia highlighted the protection of women in conflict and promotion of women in peacebuilding as part of its achievements (Australian Government, 2015). Despite this, Australia continued to pursue foreign policy objectives at odds with the protection...

This chapter explores the ways in which identity claims and identity fragmentation have played a significant role in reshaping the global political agenda. The disruptions to the post-Cold War international order and increased insecurity and political unrest have also impacted the way we debate and conceptualise identity. Globalisation and critique...

Within the space of roughly two decades, Sweden has changed from a neutral country to one that is currently engaged in a range of activities and practices that are far removed from the definition of neutrality. Its engagement with NATO, contribution of forces to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya, and its role as a leading framework nation in the emerge...

Identity is often regarded as something that is possessed by individuals, states, and other agents. In this edited collection, identity is explored across a range of approaches and under-explored case studies with a view to making visible its fractured, contingent, and dynamic features. The book brings together themes of belonging and exclusion, id...

In what ways can we think through the complexities of identity? Identity is a contested concept, but it is more than a thing possessed by agents. Identity is contingent and dynamic, constituting and reconstituting subjects with political effects. In this edited book, identity is explored through a range of unique interdisciplinary case studies from...

Drone warfare has been the subject of intense debate and scholarly attention in recent years, with a clear focus on killing from a distance, the subjectivity of the drone operator and the impact of this form of warfare on militaries and soldiers. Few studies, however, have treated drone warfare to a gendered analysis. This chapter aims to explore d...

This chapter shows how masculinist logics play out in contemporary antifeminist, father’s rights and men’s rights backlashes, in alt-right discourse and broader anti diversity and anti-‘political correctness’ in both overt and increasingly subtle ways. These contemporary backlashes naturalise essentialised gender hierarchies and their intersection...

This chapter demonstrates how masculinism continues to haunt many attempts to account for or challenge gender-based violence or violence against women. While worthwhile and marking progress, approaches that target men for primary prevention still risk negating structural gendered elements that underpin the phenomenon and re-individualising solution...

The conclusion draws together the key themes covered in the book, highlighting key aspects of masculinism. It summaries the case study chapters and indicates how masculinism works across the various cases investigated. Finally, it points to some ways in which to conceptualise alternatives to masculinist framings and logics.

In this chapter, the move towards humanitarian intervention and the rise of human rights discourse is examined in terms of the politics of protection and international ordering. Since the end of the Cold War, human rights and human security has become a central focus of the international security agenda. Intervening to defend and protect human righ...

‘Surrounded as we are by a masculinized populism that continues to enable insecurity, violence, and oppression, this book demonstrates the depth and breadth of the lineages that facilitate these masculinist practices.’ - Brent J. Steele, University of Utah, USA ‘This book shows how reactionary movements systematically mobilize masculine resentment...

Borders – both physical and otherwise – are seen to be on the rise, but in late modern warfare, a complex process of unbordering can be observed in drone warfare. Targeted killings through drone strikes have changed the battlespace, made physical occupation unnecessary and rendered the Westphalian border as contingent and arbitrary. Furthermore, dr...

The controversy of the Danish cartoon crisis in 2006 overshadowed a similar one that took place in Sweden a year later. The crises have broadly been framed as a clash of values but both cases reveal differences worthy of investigation, namely for the complex tensions and convergences between the two states on questions of immigration, Nordic solida...

The Sixth Oceanic Conference on International Studies (OCIS) was held in Melbourne, Australia between 9 and 11 July 2014. The conference was hosted by the School of Social and Political Sciences at University of Melbourne and supported by the Australian Institute of International Affairs, Deakin University, La Trobe University, Monash University, R...

Ontological security – the notion that security is not simply physical but is rather that which is concerned with the relatively stable and consistent sense of the self – has developed a more complex perspective of security, insecurity, identity and subjectivity. This paper is concerned with exploring the intersection of technology and ontological...

The challenge of the postmodern state has seen some important shifts in how we understand international security and the methods by which we address violence in the current age. Yet despite the label, it can be argued we are witnessing efforts by states to reclaim a more traditional idea of security and sovereignty in a more complex world. This pap...

This paper examines how gender has been deployed or worked into arguments for robust military peace enforcement activities beyond the traditional scope of peacekeeping in the ‘post-neutral’ states. We argue that these states provide a unique and complex case study through which to examine the transition in support for military action in specific co...

Unmanned aerial vehicles – commonly referred to as drones – have entered the global public debate in a polarising way in recent years. Their military application has raised questions about costs and efficacy versus precision and accuracy, as well as the impact on international relations, diplomacy, and warfare itself. As much as they are now consid...

The practice of extraordinary rendition has been a feature of the ‘war on terror’ and has widely been critiqued from the perspective of human rights. Here, debates have been preoccupied with the permissibility of forms of violence such as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (torture), and the suspension of law in the name of emergency and security....

In recent years, there has been growing interest in understanding international politics through different genres, such as film and documentary, art and visual representations, and other forms. This paper aims to explore the possibilities of the geopolitical imagination by exploring themes of identity and loss in the graphic novel and literary work...

The Danish cartoon crisis, which attracted international media attention in 2006, has largely been debated as an issue of freedom of speech, feeding into broader debates about the ‘clash of civilizations’. This article aims to explore the dominant discourses that performed a seemingly stable and consistent Danish identity at the domestic and extern...

Progressive politics has been central to the promotion of non-violent conflict resolution. By emphasising non-military responses to conflict and focusing on the causes of violence, progressive states and actors have worked over the decades to foster a different understanding of insecurity and alternate solutions to a variety of global security prob...

http://apo.org.au/commentary/contesting-citizenship

The practice of extraordinary rendition has been a feature of the ‘war on terror’ and has widely been critiqued from the perspective of human rights. Here, debates have been preoccupied with the permissibility of forms of violence (torture) and the suspension of law in the name of emergency and security. The practice, however, also contains implica...

This chapter aims to reconsider the legacy of neutrality outlined in the previous chapter. With the end of the Cold War and the demise of bipolarity, the rationale for neutrality seemingly disappeared. However, neutrality persisted, despite expectations that it would no longer be a viable security policy option. This opened up intellectual space to...

Exploring the advent of Swedish neutrality via a constructivist analysis, this chapter re-examines the ‘realpolitik’ explanation of its origins. It focuses on Sweden's demise as a great power in the region and the ensuing (conflictual) debates about identity that became tied to neutrality, before being adopted as part of the platform of the Social...

In the post-war years, Swedish social democracy developed into a hegemonic political force, and with it, neutrality took on a more defined meaning. Determined to ensure that neutrality would not be subject to the criticism it faced after the war, a ‘credible neutrality’ policy was crafted, centred around non-alliance, self-defence and consensus. Ac...

Although Bildt's government was short-lived, the impact of Swedish politics and society was not insignificant. When the Social Democrats returned to power, they steered Sweden into the EU. This presented a particular challenge to neutrality for a European Union that had ambitions to develop a common security policy.

At the turn of the 1990s, domestic and external changes would make a decisive impact on Swedish identity and neutrality. Carl Bildt's non-socialist coalition broke the hegemonic position of the Social Democratic Party, instigating a new approach to the Swedish Model, Europe, and neutrality. Bildt wanted to steer Sweden away from the past towards a...

Swedish social democracy was presented with a new set of challenges in the 1970s and 1980s, both domestically and externally. As the Swedish Model faced ruptures internally, social forces challenged the established idea of Swedish identity and society nurtured by the Social Democratic Party. The possibility of European integration and shifts in Soc...

The transition from neutrality to post-neutrality has been debated by constructivists and rationalists alike as a seemingly logical and unproblematic move: the end of the Cold War and the widening of the security agenda in a globalizing world have meant that a state-centric approach to security is no longer viable or desirable. The former neutrals...

This article approaches ‘neutrality’ as an essentially contested concept and traces its meaning and purpose over centuries-long historical timelines and situated political, societal and security contexts. It distinguishes neutrality from other concepts such as ‘neutralization’ ‘non-belligerency’, ‘non-alignment’, ‘military non-alignment’, ‘military...

This chapter examines the impact of social constructivism on Security Studies as well as its critique of the assumed orthodoxy of rationalist approaches to security and the international system. In particular, it considers the manner that social constructivists address the question of how security and security threats are ‘socially constructed’. Th...

This chapter addresses how the celebration and meaning of Christmas become intertwined politically and socially with societies engaged in war. It then turns to the build-up to the Second World War and examines how Christmas was appropriated by the Nazi movement for ideological purposes. Furthermore, it moves to the first Gulf War of the early 1990s...

Since the post-war era, the Swedish Social Democratic Party ( Socialdemokratiska arbetarepartiet , or SAP) has been regarded as the country's ‘natural party of government’, occupying a ‘hegemonic’ position in national political and social life. The institutions it had built up during the post-war period through consensualism and universalism, such...

The end of the Cold War and the War on Terror has signalled a shift in the security policies of all states. It has also led to the reconsideration of the policy of neutrality, and what being neutral means in the present age. This book examines the conceptualization of Swedish neutrality from the Peloponnesian War to today, uncovering how neutrality...