| Summary/Abstract |
In Economy of Force (2015), Patricia Owens has produced original scholarship of the first order. She recovers the discourse of household rule that has informed modern social thought. Readers of Security Dialogue and those who work in critical security studies will find her work of special interest. International relations scholars have typically turned to social theory as a source of critical insight for leverage in an intellectually and politically conservative discipline. Security Dialogue has been an important forum for such work, where disciplines influenced by social theory, from sociology to political economy, have been brought to bear on questions of security. Owens, by contrast, lays bare the hidden conservative politics behind much social theorizing. For her, social thought seeks to domesticate social disorder.
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