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To what extent can the United Nations serve as an agent for emancipatory change and transformation? This fundamental question lies at the heart of this exciting new book. Author Eli Stamnes applies the principles and precepts of Critical Security Studies to offer a new and highly innovative perspective on the UN operation that was deployed in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia between December 1992 and February 1999. Three of the core arguments of Critical Security Studies are brought to bear, namely: the importance of the wider security agenda beyond the purely military; the importance of referent objects´ other than the state; and a determination to make a concern with human emancipation central to the academic enterprise. The result is to open up new or underappreciated dimensions of the UN operation in Macedonia. By developing a framework of analysis based on the ideas of Axel Honneth the book also makes an original and important contribution to the further development of Critical Security Studies itself.

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Dr Eli Stamnes (PhD, Aberystwyth) is Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and heads its Responsibility to Protect Programme. Her research interests revolve around critical approaches to the study of peace and security, in particular UN peace operations, peacebuilding and the Responsibility to Protect.

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