Critical Military Studies is a new academic sub-discipline which brings critical theory to the study of military institutions and practices. [1] It intersects with many academic disciplines, such as international relations, political science, gender studies, human geography and anthropology. [1] Academic conferences in 2013 and 2014 have included panels on Critical Military Studies. [2] [3] The sub-discipline also has a new academic journal published by Taylor and Francis. [4] Scholarship on Critical Military Studies includes issues such as military recruitment [5] [6] and military landscapes. [7] Critical Military Studies is particularly concerned with how understandings of gender and sexuality shape military practices and research on the military. [3]
Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity. It draws knowledge from several fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, etc. It is related to an interdiscipline or an interdisciplinary field, which is an organizational unit that crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions emerge. Large engineering teams are usually interdisciplinary, as a power station or mobile phone or other project requires the melding of several specialties. However, the term "interdisciplinary" is sometimes confined to academic settings.
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 18th century. In addition to sociology, it now encompasses a wide array of academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, linguistics, management, communication studies, psychology, culturology and political science.
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field now overlaps with queer studies and men's studies. Its rise to prominence, especially in Western universities after 1990, coincided with the rise of deconstruction.
Queer theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of queer studies and women's studies.
Human ecology is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. The philosophy and study of human ecology has a diffuse history with advancements in ecology, geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, zoology, epidemiology, public health, and home economics, among others.
Feminist geography is a sub-discipline of human geography that applies the theories, methods, and critiques of feminism to the study of the human environment, society, and geographical space. Feminist geography emerged in the 1970s, when members of the women's movement called on academia to include women as both producers and subjects of academic work. Feminist geographers aim to incorporate positions of race, class, ability, and sexuality into the study of geography. The discipline was a target for the hoaxes of the grievance studies affair.
The quantitative revolution (QR) was a paradigm shift that sought to develop a more rigorous and systematic methodology for the discipline of geography. It came as a response to the inadequacy of regional geography to explain general spatial dynamics. The main claim for the quantitative revolution is that it led to a shift from a descriptive (idiographic) geography to an empirical law-making (nomothetic) geography. The quantitative revolution occurred during the 1950s and 1960s and marked a rapid change in the method behind geographical research, from regional geography into a spatial science.
Transnational feminism refers to both a contemporary feminist paradigm and the corresponding activist movement. Both the theories and activist practices are concerned with how globalization and capitalism affect people across nations, races, genders, classes, and sexualities. This movement asks to critique the ideologies of traditional white, classist, western models of feminist practices from an intersectional approach and how these connect with labor, theoretical applications, and analytical practice on a geopolitical scale.
Children's geographies is an area of study within human geography and childhood studies which involves researching the places and spaces of children's lives.
Critical terrorism studies (CTS) applies a critical theory approach rooted in counter-hegemonic and politically progressive critical theory to the study of terrorism. With links to the Frankfurt School of critical theory and the Aberystwyth School of critical security studies, CTS seeks to understand terrorism as a social construction, or a label, that is applied to certain violent acts through a range of political, legal and academic processes. It also seeks to understand and critique dominant forms of counter-terrorism.
Donna Alvermann is an American educator and researcher in the field of Language and Literacy Education whose work focuses on adolescent literacy in and out of school, inclusive of new media and digital literacies. Her most recent research interest involves developing historical-autobiographical methods for uncovering silences in scholarly writing that mask more than they disclose. She is the Omer Clyde and Elizabeth Parr Aderhold Professor in Education in the Mary Frances Early College of Education at the University of Georgia (UGA). She is also a UGA-appointed Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education.
Feminist security studies is a subdiscipline of security studies that draws attention to gendered dimensions of security.
Rosalind Clair Gill is a British sociologist and feminist cultural theorist. She is currently Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at City, University of London. Gill is author or editor of ten books, and numerous articles and chapters, and her work has been translated into Chinese, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.
Critical realism is a philosophical approach to understanding science, and in particular social science, initially developed by Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014). It specifically opposes forms of empiricism and positivism by viewing science as concerned with identifying causal mechanisms. In the last decades of the twentieth century it also stood against various forms of postmodernism and poststructuralism by insisting on the reality of objective existence. In contrast to positivism's methodological foundation, and poststructuralism's epistemological foundation, critical realism insists that (social) science should be built from an explicit ontology. Critical realism is one of a range of types of philosophical realism, as well as forms of realism advocated within social science such as analytic realism and subtle realism.
Violent extremism is a form of extremism that condones and enacts violence with ideological or deliberate intent, such as religious or political violence. Violent extremist views often conflate with religious and political violence, and can manifest in connection with a range of issues, including politics, religion, and gender relations.
Susan "Sue" Speer C.Psychol, FHEA is a senior lecturer at the School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester.
Climate security is a political and policy framework that looks at the impacts of climate on security. Climate security often refers to the national and international security risks induced, directly or indirectly, by changes in climate patterns. It is a concept that summons the idea that climate-related change amplifies existing risks in society that endangers the security of humans, ecosystems, economy, infrastructure and societies. Climate-related security risks have far-reaching implications for the way the world manages peace and security. Climate actions to adapt and mitigate impacts can also have a negative effect on human security if mishandled.
Farhana Sultana is a Full Professor of Geography at Syracuse University, where she is also a Research Director for the Program on Environmental Collaboration and Conflicts at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Her research considers how water management and climate change impact society. Her first book, The Right to Water: Politics, Governance and Social Struggles, investigates the relationships between human rights and access to clean water. She is a feminist political ecologist whose work focuses on climate justice, water governance, sustainability, international development, and decolonizing global frameworks.
Maritime sociology is a sub-discipline of sociology studying the relationship of human societies and cultures to the oceans and the marine environment as well as related social processes. Subjects studied by maritime sociology are human activities at and with the sea such as seafaring, fisheries, maritime and coastal tourism, off-shore extraction, deep-sea mining, or marine environmental conservation. Institutions and discourses related to those activities are also studied by the sub-discipline. Another area of study is the societal-natural relations in the marine realm such as, for instance, the problem of over-fishing or the social consequences of climate change. In sum, maritime sociology conceptualizes the oceans as a social rather than a merely natural space.
Kalpana Wilson is an author and scholar with a focus on South Asia. She is a founding member of the South Asian Solidarity Group. She has taught at the London School of Economics, SOAS University of London, and Birkbeck, University of London.