Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper lays out Threat Studies as an emerging sub-discipline of International Relations and Security Studies. It breaks from the conventional reactive, state-centric approaches that dominate Security Studies by proposing an interdisciplinary model that, instead, analyzes how threats are constructed, perceived, and mobilized politically, economically, technologically, and environmentally. Drawing upon critical perspectives, discourse and political psychology, systems theory, and integration theory, the study argues that threats do not simply exist; they are crafted socially and politically, usually as mechanisms of domination, exclusion, and securitization. By analyzing the ontological and epistemological questions regarding threats, the paper provides a bounded classification distinguishing between material versus perceived threats, and direct versus indirect threats. The paper defends Threat Studies as an intellectually and strategically pertinent innovation that shifts security from militaristic reaction to ethical and preventive engagement with the causes of instability in a hyperconnected world.
Authors: Mehmet Recai Uygur, Fatma Sever
Institution: SMK University of Applied Social Sciences
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4414742293