Michael J. Butler – författare

This book seeks to interrogate how contemporary policy issues become ‘securitized’ and, furthermore, what the implications of this process are. A generation after the introduction of the concept of securitization to the security studies field, this book engages with how securitization and desecuritization ‘works’ within and across a wide range of security domains including terrorism and counter-terrorism, climate change, sexual and gender-based violence, inter-state and intra-state conflict, identity, and memory in various geographic and social contexts. Blending theory and application, the contributors to this volume – drawn from different disciplinary, ontological, and geographic ‘spaces’ – orient their investigations around three common analytical objectives: revealing deficiencies in and through application(s) of securitization; considering securitization through speech-acts and discourse as well as other mechanisms; and exposing latent orthodoxies embedded in securitization research. The volume demonstrates the dynamic and elastic quality of securitization and desecuritization as concepts that bear explanatory fruit when applied across a wide range of security issues, actors, and audiences. It also reveals the deficiencies in restricting securitization research to an overly narrow set of issues, actors, and mechanisms.

This volume will be of great interest to scholars of critical security studies, international security, and International Relations.

Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book seeks to interrogate how contemporary policy issues become ‘securitized’ and, furthermore, what the implications of this process are. A generation after the introduction of the concept of securitization to the security studies field, this book engages with how securitization and desecuritization ‘works’ within and across a wide range of security domains including terrorism and counter-terrorism, climate change, sexual and gender-based violence, inter-state and intra-state conflict, identity, and memory in various geographic and social contexts. Blending theory and application, the contributors to this volume – drawn from different disciplinary, ontological, and geographic ‘spaces’ – orient their investigations around three common analytical objectives: revealing deficiencies in and through application(s) of securitization; considering securitization through speech-acts and discourse as well as other mechanisms; and exposing latent orthodoxies embedded in securitization research. The volume demonstrates the dynamic and elastic quality of securitization and desecuritization as concepts that bear explanatory fruit when applied across a wide range of security issues, actors, and audiences. It also reveals the deficiencies in restricting securitization research to an overly narrow set of issues, actors, and mechanisms.

This volume will be of great interest to scholars of critical security studies, international security, and International Relations.

Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book revisits and interrogates the evolution of the Responsibility to Protect in search of the root cause of R2P’s failure to date.

Employing a critical constructivist lens throughout, the book locates the origin of that apparent failure in the close association of R2P with humanitarian intervention. In returning to the ideational underpinnings and broader ambitions of R2P’s architects, the analysis reveals that reducing R2P to little more than a “solution” to the long-standing problem(s) confronting humanitarian intervention betrayed its fundamental purpose: advancing a new norm of, and for, human security provision. Employing a modified version of the norm life-cycle model as a diagnostic tool, the author uncovers the underlying dynamics of R2P’s normative stagnation over the past two decades. The book concludes with a prescriptive remedy in the form of a two-part blueprint for reconstructing and reanimating R2P’s normative agenda for an international society confronted by mounting and existential threats to humanity.

This book will be of much interest to scholars and students of the Responsibility to Protect, human rights, security studies, and international relations in general.

This book revisits and interrogates the evolution of the Responsibility to Protect in search of the root cause of R2P’s failure to date.

Employing a critical constructivist lens throughout, the book locates the origin of that apparent failure in the close association of R2P with humanitarian intervention. In returning to the ideational underpinnings and broader ambitions of R2P’s architects, the analysis reveals that reducing R2P to little more than a “solution” to the long-standing problem(s) confronting humanitarian intervention betrayed its fundamental purpose: advancing a new norm of, and for, human security provision. Employing a modified version of the norm life-cycle model as a diagnostic tool, the author uncovers the underlying dynamics of R2P’s normative stagnation over the past two decades. The book concludes with a prescriptive remedy in the form of a two-part blueprint for reconstructing and reanimating R2P’s normative agenda for an international society confronted by mounting and existential threats to humanity.

This book will be of much interest to scholars and students of the Responsibility to Protect, human rights, security studies, and international relations in general.

Sociologists and historians can examine and dissect our culture, but only a true eyewitness can offer the details on the ground. In Through the Eyes of a Lawman, author Michael J. Butler presents an insiders look at the people and organizations that have affected the US intelligence services; the modern way law and law enforcement operates and has evolved; the educational deficiencies of the system; and our collective loss of abstract and critical thinking. Through humorous and sober anecdotes, Through the Eyes of a Lawman addresses the issue of whether we have become a make-it-up-as-we-go-along society.

Butlers story begins in the 1950s in Brooklyn, New York, and is told through his perspective as a retired cop, lawyer, former US intelligence analyst, and college instructor. Against the backdrop of his extensive law enforcement experience, Butler paints a portrait of todays society and culture, examines how it has been evolving, and explores what it means for the countrys future.

Through the Eyes of a Lawman goes behind the curtain that separates the people from the law, police, the courts, the intelligence services, and the government to analyze the ideas of heroes, villains, cops, terrorism, trials, classrooms, judges, soldiers, Vietnam, and politics.