eprintid: 10203892
rev_number: 8
eprint_status: archive
userid: 699
dir: disk0/10/20/38/92
datestamp: 2025-03-14 12:53:40
lastmod: 2025-03-14 12:53:40
status_changed: 2025-03-14 12:53:40
type: thesis
metadata_visibility: show
sword_depositor: 699
creators_name: Kurylo, Bohdana
title: Civil Society and the Politics of Security
ispublished: unpub
divisions: UCL
divisions: B03
divisions: C01
note: Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).  Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms.  Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.
abstract: Civil society has been a noticeable blind spot in security studies despite the ongoing 
deepening of its agenda over recent decades. Against this background, this thesis 
develops the argument that civil society can be a meaningful security actor – not only 
in terms of conceptualising and providing security but especially through its positioning 
towards and relationship with other actors that contest the situated terrains of security.
To illustrate this argument, the dissertation explores how civil society 
participates in the politics of security in two specific contexts: reproductive health 
struggles in Poland and the Russo-Ukrainian war. Capturing these variegated 
enmeshments of civil society in security politics requires a contextualist analytical 
framework that focuses on and reformulates four pivotal categories underpinning 
these processes: civil society itself, security, empowerment and emergency. The 
analysis of both contexts shows a variable configuration of these elements. Central to 
each context, however, is the self-constitution of civil society as a plural security actor. 
Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Polish and Ukrainian civil society groups 
and hermeneutic textual analysis, I examine the conditions empowering them to act 
and mobilise in response to perceived emergencies. The result demonstrates that 
through spontaneous concerted action amidst the emancipatory moments of 
emergency, citizen groups laid claim to the very power they required to assert their 
presence in security politics. This presence reflected a varied understanding of 
security and practices associated with it, along with a multifaceted relationship 
between civil society, the state and the citizen.
This research contributes to the burgeoning corpus of critical security 
scholarship that seeks to decentre elite but also academic security knowledges by 
attending to marginalised subjectivities in non-Western contexts. It joins cross disciplinary efforts to deepen the understanding of civil society’s multivalent role in the 
politics of security through a conceptually supple, empirically nuanced and normatively 
aware lens.
date: 2025-01-28
date_type: published
full_text_type: other
thesis_class: doctoral_embargoed
thesis_award: Ph.D
language: eng
verified: verified_manual
elements_id: 2354708
lyricists_name: Kurylo, Bohdana
lyricists_id: BKURY26
actors_name: Kurylo, Bohdana
actors_name: Mustafa, Adelat
actors_id: BKURY26
actors_id: AMUST21
actors_role: owner
actors_role: impersonator
full_text_status: restricted
pages: 287
institution: UCL (University College London)
department: SSEES
thesis_type: Doctoral
citation:        Kurylo, Bohdana;      (2025)    Civil Society and the Politics of Security.                   Doctoral thesis  (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).    
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10203892/1/Bohdana_Kurylo_Bohdana%20Kurylo%20-%20PhD%20thesis.pdf