[ecrea] CFP: Multicultural Discourses of Security

Special Issue Call: Journal of Multicultural Discourses

Multicultural Discourses of Security

In contemporary global society, ‘security’ is considered an especially 
complex and contested concept. Historically, this concept has connoted 
states’ development of institutions, technologies, and strategies 
enabling their pursuit of foreign policy – particularly, the military 
use of armed force. More recently, intensified debate among state 
officials, scholars, and activists has expanded consideration of 
non-traditional actors, sites, conditions, and processes (e.g., ‘human 
security’). Amid these changes, the study of security has persistently 
focused on the efforts of individuals and groups to conceptualize and 
claim cherished phenomena, to defend those claims against perceived and 
actual threats, and to maintain a lifeworld characterized by relative 
stability, liberty, and prosperity.

Communication and discourse scholars have displayed growing interest in 
the study of security. Reasons include: a desire to engage with material 
conditions and powerful institutions that produce (often through violent 
means) fateful outcomes of freedom and oppression; an interdisciplinary 
convergence of epistemologies, theories, and topics emphasizing the 
communicative constitution (and mediation) of societal governance; and 
finally, a desire to ethically intervene in hegemonic discourses of 
neoliberalism and neo-conservativism that have markedly increased 
conditions of global risk. To date, those scholars have addressed a 
variety of related topics, including: conflict; war; peace; militarism 
and defense; (counter-) terrorism; aid and development; surveillance; 
globalization; (im-)migration; (post- and neo-)colonialism; nationalism; 
gender, sexual, ethnic and racial identity; truth, justice and 
reconciliation; public health; and cyber-threats. The growing challenge 
posed to liberal democratic governance by populist movements in the U.S. 
and Europe, further, suggests that international and scholarly concern 
regarding security matters will remain heightened for the near future.

This special issue provides a forum for scholarship seeking to interpret 
and critique “security” as a multicultural and discursive phenomenon. It 
calls for both empirical studies and theoretical essays that expand 
existing interdisciplinary discussion by elaborating the distinctly 
communicative status of security, both within and between cultures. In 
keeping with the journal’s focus, submissions seeking to de-center U.S. 
and western-alliance/coalition discourses of security, and to promote 
reflective, dialogic, diverse, and pluralist discourses, are 
particularly encouraged. Related topics of submissions may include – but 
are not limited to – the following:

-- Local, regional, and vernacular discourses of security, and their 
relationship to official discourses of national and international security;
-- Evolving discursive genres and programs of security (e.g., public 
diplomacy);
-- Discursive practices that elevate and decrease the value of life (and 
thus entitlement to legal rights and protections) for particular 
cultural groups;
-- Discursive ‘securitization’ of nontraditional security concerns 
(e.g., climate change; public health; public education, etc.);
--Articulations of media, technology, and discourse contributing to 
individual and group (in-) security (e.g., surveillance of users 
facilitated by social media platforms);
-- Communicative dilemmas and conflicts arising from the articulation of 
cultural discourses of identity (e.g., gender, sexual, ethnic, racial, 
class, religious, etc.) with hegemonic national and state discourses of 
identity (e.g., of citizenship, patriotism, and modernism);
-- Cultural meanings and practices associated with the diffusion of 
state and sub-state militarism;
-- Discursive intersections between the spheres of “domestic” (e.g., 
criminal justice) and “foreign” policy (e.g., counter-terrorism);
-- National, international, and NGO discourses associated with refugee 
flows from current conflicts in Middle Eastern and Northern African nations;
-- Organizational, professional, and institutional discourses of 
security (e.g., nuclear strategy; intelligence analysis; private 
military contractors; etc.);
-- Analysis of actual interaction occurring in security contexts (e.g., 
border-crossings; congressional and parliamentary hearings; ‘enhanced 
interrogations’, etc.); and finally,
-- Meta-theoretical critique of existing scholarly discourses of 
communication and /or security.

This special issue will be co-edited by Hamilton Bean (Associate 
Professor, Communication, University of Colorado-Denver, USA) and Bryan 
C. Taylor (Professor, Communication, University of Colorado-Boulder, 
USA). The deadline for submission of manuscripts is April 1st, 2017. 
Manuscript length should be no longer than 8000 words, including 
abstract, references, and tables. All submissions for this special issue 
should insert the phrase "Special Issue: Multicultural Discourses of 
Security" in the top left-hand corner of the first manuscript page, as 
well as noting this status in any cover letter provided.  Otherwise, 
manuscripts should be formatted and submitted per standard journal 
policies and procedures (see: 
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=rmmd20). 
All manuscripts will be peer-reviewed, with the timeline for requested 
revisions intended to ensure 2017 publication. Please contact the issue 
co-editors with questions at either (Hamilton.bean /at/ ucdenver.edu), or 
(bryan.taylor /at/ colorado.edu). General information about the journal may be 
found at: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmmd20.


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