Dr S. Samuel C. Rajiv is Associate Fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. Click here for detailed profile
Following a critical social constructivist approach, Runa Das affirms in Revisiting Nuclear India that India’s nuclear decisions are a product of the state’s strategic culture, which is generated by its ‘security community’ not only as a response to ‘real politics’ but also are articulated and re-interpreted within an ‘political-ideological-cultural space’ carved out by the discursive practices of the security community. For Das, strategic cultures are not culturally-conditioned or historically determined but socially constructed. She uses the critical constructivist concept of ‘security imaginary’ as defined by Himadeep Muppidi to whom the term denotes a ‘field of meanings and social power’ providing an ‘organised set of interpretations for making sense of a complex international system’ and which produces ‘distinctive social identities’ (p. 10).
Revisiting Nuclear India: Strategic Culture and (In) Security Imaginary, by Runa Das
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Following a critical social constructivist approach, Runa Das affirms in Revisiting Nuclear India that India’s nuclear decisions are a product of the state’s strategic culture, which is generated by its ‘security community’ not only as a response to ‘real politics’ but also are articulated and re-interpreted within an ‘political-ideological-cultural space’ carved out by the discursive practices of the security community. For Das, strategic cultures are not culturally-conditioned or historically determined but socially constructed. She uses the critical constructivist concept of ‘security imaginary’ as defined by Himadeep Muppidi to whom the term denotes a ‘field of meanings and social power’ providing an ‘organised set of interpretations for making sense of a complex international system’ and which produces ‘distinctive social identities’ (p. 10).
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