This seminar will audit and discuss Barry Buzan and Ole Waever’s regional security complex theory (RSCT) as it relates to the Middle East. RSCT was developed over the 1990s and early 2000s around a central theme of securitization; that states are drawn together into regional or subregional clusters based on a shared securitization of an issue or actor. With the publication of their book Regions and Powers in 2003, their emphasis was on “major processes of securitization, desecuritization, or both”, with securitization based on a “securitizing action” by any politically influential actor and usually leading to new policies or actions that address this identified existential threat. Buzan and Waever identified the Middle East as an RSC, and within this saw Maghrebi, Levantine, and Gulf subcomplexes, with Turkey considered an “insulator” state between the Middle East and Europe. This seminar will examine the RSCT argument and its claims with regards to the Middle East and North Africa.

Speaker:

Matthew Gray joined Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan as an associate professor in September 2016. His role covers teaching on political science, especially on Middle Eastern studies. His research interests are mostly focused on the politics, political economy, and international relations of the Gulf monarchies. Prior to joining Waseda, he was at The Australian National University in Canberra over 2005-2016. Over 1997-2005 worked in the Australian government in various roles including trade promotion, defence analysis, and immigration policy. He has been a visiting scholar at Tokyo University in Japan and at Durham University in the UK.He has published extensively in reputed academic journals. He is the author of Global Security Watch - Saudi Arabia (Praeger, 2014); Qatar: Politics and the Challenges of Development (Lynne Rienner, 2013); and Conspiracy Theories in the Arab World: Sources and Politics (Routledge, 2010).