FEAS RESEARCH E-BULLETIN FEAS RESEARCH E-BULLETIN DECEMBER 2017 | Page 11

Author: Erçandırlı, Yelda
Title: Green (in) Security in International Relations Theory: A Critical Realist Critique
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pınar Bedirhanoğlu Toker
Department: International Relations
Date: October 2017
Abstract: This thesis discusses the linkage between environment and security in International
Relations (IR) Theory from a critical realist (CR) perspective. It questions the dominant concept of
security in IR and asks whether IR theory is adequate to understand green (in)securities. This
dissertation indicates the necessity of problematizing the linkage between environment and security
in terms of the socio-natural complexities and emphasizes the dialectic relations of emerging
features of these insecurities without being reduced them to their biological/material or
cultural/ideational dimensions. What constitutes one another common point of the approaches in
IR, excluding the natural or social aspect of environmental problems is that the (re)production of
agent-centrism in describing the relationship between environmental issues and security. It is
argued that the linkage between environment and security should be considered as comprising of
multiple, complex inequalities or injustices underlining that the question of how social structures
are shaped by the non-human nature. From this point of view, the concept of ‘green’, rather than of
the environmental or ecological, is deployed in the thesis. In this sense, the concept of green
(in)security is harnessed as a synonym of the concept of socio-natural (in)security in this
dissertation. In doing so, the thesis seeks to criticize positivist, post-positivist approaches, arguing
for non-reductionist a green (socio-natural) approach, based on CR.
7