Walker Rob J.

This author's articles

• Conference : Twelve Stories in Search of a Sovereign

  13 November 2007
  The research group on « Mapping the field of Security in Europe» invites you to the conference: Twelve Stories in Search of a Sovereign

• The Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security: Mid-Term Report on the Results of the CHALLENGE Project

  20 February 2007
  The CHALLENGE project responds to widespread concerns about the resort to specific illiberal practices by contemporary liberal regimes. These practices are linked with the identification of increasing insecurities globally, insecurities that are widely interpreted as obliging sterner policies from the authorities and, consequently, new constraints on principles of liberty under law and presumptions about the innocence of individuals. Specifically, the project examines tensions created by claims that ‘security is the first freedom’ and that a new ‘balance’ has to be established to manage the global scale of contemporary dangers.

• L’international, l’impérial, l’exceptionnel

  13 February 2006
  Il est souvent fait recours aux termes international, impérial et exceptionnel pour analyser la vie politique contemporaine. Cet article explore ce qui se joue en chacun de ces trois concepts et examine les relations qu’ils entretiennent ; il insiste sur la saillance perdue des concepts d’international et d’impérial et la force croissante des concepts de l’exceptionnel ; il esquisse une triple critique de la conception particulière de la souveraineté par Karl Schmitt, entendue comme la capacité à décider des exceptions ; il prend en considération les implications de cette critique sur le statut de penseur critique attribué à Kant ; il essaye enfin d’ouvrir sur la question de savoir ce que signifie le fait d’invoquer l’exceptionnel depuis les attaques sur New York et l’invasion de l’Irak.

• Walker Rob : curriculum vitae

  23 May 2005
  Rob Walker is Professor of International Relations at the School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy at Keele University, UK, and Professor of Political Science and Director of the Graduate Program in Cultural, Social and Political Thought at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada. He is editor of the journal Alternatives: Global, Local, Political. His interests are in international political theory; theories of sovereignty and subjectivity; globalization/localization; postcolonial theory; politics of security; early-modern political thought, especially Machiavelli, Hobbes and Kant; contemporary cultural, social and political theory, especially Weber and Foucault; concepts of space/time in political thought; politics and violence; theories of discourse, ideology and culture; philosophies of social science.

• WP1: The New State of Exception: The Political and Social Implications of Globalized Insecurities

  19 April 2005
  This workpackage draws on political and cultural theory, international relations, and criminology to develop an innovative theorisation of the nexus between security and liberty and its application to the European context. It specifically responds to characterisations of contemporary security practices in terms of «the state of exception», the spatio-temporal re-articulation of the exception in political practice, and the political and social implications of this re-articulation.

• The notions of «state of exception», «state of emergency», «war on terror» and «sovereign movement» through their relationship to the post-11 September policies against terrorism

  7 December 2004
  Rob Walker provided a political theory perspective of the current state of exception and the so-called «state of emergency». In his view, CHALLENGE responds to many challenges. There are many ways of identifying what these are. The crucial judgement informing this particular project, however, is that these challenges converge on a need to reconsider the way in which we understand what it means to place limits on what are taken to be the normal conventions of modern political life. By limits he referred to two different aspects of modern political life.

• The New State of Exception: The Political and Social Implications of Globalized Insecurities

  30 November 2004
  This workpackage draws on political and cultural theory, international relations, and criminology to develop an innovative theorisation of the nexus between security and liberty and its application to the European context. It specifically responds to characterisations of contemporary security practices in terms of «the state of exception», the spatio-temporal re-articulation of the exception in political practice, and the political and social implications of this re-articulation.