ABSTRACT
It is impossible to understand contemporary Security Studies without a grounding in realism.1 After all, many of the most influential theories that have ever been advanced about violence and security among human groups fall within this intellectual tradition.2
Given the many scholarly criticisms of realism, ongoing debates about its place in security studies and the proliferation in recent years of such realist ‘brands’ as defensive, offensive and neoclassical realism, gaining such a grounding might seem a formidable undertaking. In fact, the task has been made easier by all this controversy and complexity. As this chapter shows, realist thinking is now far more robust and rigorous than ever, making it much more accessible and useful to security scholars. This chapter provides the four key elements that students of international security need to make use of realism: a simple definition of realism that distinguishes it from other approaches; an introduction to the various sub-schools of realist thought, such as neoclassical realism, which help to bring order to the daunting diversity of realist scholarship; an outline of some of the most prominent realist theories, which do the actual work of explaining puzzling real-world phenomena; and a sketch of contemporary realist contribution to Security Studies.
