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The spandrels of urban security: extending the formalist turn in security studies

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Abstract

This article seeks to explore and extend the broader coordinates of the formalist turn within International Security Studies. While the paradigmatic shift towards hybrid security is a welcome upgrade and a much-needed counterweight to what has been a deep-rooted tradition of functionalist and teleological scholarship, the study of hybrid security orders continues to leave many more issues unexplored, especially in relation to the in-between spaces that emerge in articulated structural systems. The article shows that by examining the politics of spatial by-products of formal co-development, explored through the conceptual prisms of evolutionary biology and spherology, and the broader dynamics of urban security we may not only develop a better grasp of the self-organising and informal efforts of local actors to construct their own self-contained lifeworlds and peaceworlds, but also strike a more fruitful balance between formal and functional analysis.

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Adopted from Gould 1997

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Nik Hynek, the editorial staff of JIRD and the three anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Research for this article has been funded by the Metropolitan University Prague IGS Grant No. E11-53.

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  1. Metropolitan University Prague, Dubečská 900/10, 100 31, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jaroslav Weinfurter

  2. Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University Prague, Smetanovo nábřeží 6, 110 01, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jaroslav Weinfurter

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Weinfurter, J. The spandrels of urban security: extending the formalist turn in security studies. J Int Relat Dev 25, 450–475 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-021-00247-7

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