A modest proposal: comments on Burke’s security cosmopolitanism

Abstract

This piece argues while that Burke’s Security Cosmopolitanism puts forward a compelling and persuasive argument on the ethics of security, its potential is not realizable within the frame of moral cosmopolitanism. I argue that Kantian cosmopolitanism should be understood not as a new and transformative framework for ethical security studies, but as the defining framework of the post-colonial international system. My own more modest approach to ethical security argues for careful attention to life-sustaining relations and practices of care, and to the wider norms and structures that constrain and limit the ability of households and communities to address insecurities through care.

Keywords:

• ethics
• cosmopolitanism
• relational ontology
• governance
• care
• vulnerability
• dependence
• post-colonial
• everyday insecurities

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fiona Robinson

Fiona Robinson is Professor of Political Science at Carleton University; her research and teaching focuses on critical, feminist, and ethical theory in global politics. She is the author of several books and articles on feminist ethics relating to globalization, human rights, political economy and security. Her 2011 book The Ethics of Care: A Feminist Approach to Human Security was awarded the inaugural J. Ann Tickner Book Prize from the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California.