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This paper addresses the relationship between power and knowledge in the context of the construction of security in Australia. Specifically, it seeks to apply critical theoretical approaches to security to the Australian government’s security discourse regarding asylum-seekers in 2001 and terrorist attacks in 2001 and 2002. It is argued in this paper that perceptions of the provision of security are central to the political legitimacy of states. In particular, specific actions on the part of governments may be enabled by perceptions among their citizens that these actions maintain or further their security. If we accept this point, then the crucial question becomes: how do certain meanings of security come to resonate with particular populations in particular contexts? It is argued here that we can further our understanding of this process through acknowledging relationships between power and knowledge, and specifically the role of governments in creating contexts in which particular meanings of security become resonant. Through applying such an approach to the Australian government’s depiction of asylum-seekers and its response to terrorist attacks in New York and particularly Bali, we can move towards a greater understanding of the ways in which security is constructed and of the relationship between security and political legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those interested in the construction of security in contemporary international politics- those who reject the idea of security as a fixed ontological entity- have increasingly turned to the Copenhagen School approach to provide an analytical framework for explorations of the construction of security in particular contexts. Most prominently, of course, has been the use of the central organising concept of ?securitisation?, to point to the discursive construction of particular issues as security threats. This paper argues that while an important and innovative contribution to our understanding of security and its construction, the Copenhagen School?s framework is problematically narrow in three basic senses. First, the form of act constructing security is defined narrowly, with the focus on the speech of dominant actors, usually political leaders. Second, the context of the act is defined narrowly, with the focus only on the moment of intervention. Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, the framework of securitization is narrow in the sense that the nature of the act is defined solely in terms of threats to security. This encourages a conceptualisation of security politics in negative, reactionary terms.If we are interested in understanding the processes through which particular understandings of security come to constitute the lens through which particular issues are conceptualised and addressed by particular political communities, we need to move beyond a focus on the depiction through speech of existential threats. We need also to understand how those political communities themselves are constituted, how particular articulations of security come to capture the way that community deals with those issues, and to locate and acknowledge alternative articulations of security, particularly those outlined by marginalised voices. This paper points to the importance of exploring these spaces, and provides some guidance about how we might go about defining a broader analytical framework for the study of the construction of security. In particular, it suggests that future research would do well to focus not simply on the positioning of issues as existential threats, but also to interrogate the particular meaning of security that comes to prominence in different contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Securitisation and emancipation constitute two of the most central concepts to the broader challenge to mainstream security studies emerging particularly since the end of the Cold War. These concepts, however, and the security ?schools? in which they are embedded (the Copenhagen School and the Welsh School), have had relatively little to say to or about each other beyond dismissive criticisms or relatively vague indications of a possible academic distribution of labour that sees the approaches as not necessarily competing, but as doing fundamentally different things. First, therefore, the paper sketches out some of the reasons for the absence of a more systematic and engaged dialogue between proponents of securitisation and emancipation. The paper argues that whilst tensions and differences do exist, the problems faced by both approaches share deeper analytical and normative similarities that are usually ignored in the literature. Second, however, the paper identifies areas in which these concepts and approaches might be usefully brought together to enhance our understanding of security and the normative imperative of addressing individual suffering. The central argument advanced is that these concepts and approaches share a common normative concern with redressing structural and physical violence through the recovery or establishment of human agency through representation. We view this as the central normative imperative of both emancipation and (de)securitisation.In trying to build a middle ground and space for dialogue between the approaches the paper provides a set of interpretations of emancipation (Welsh School) and securitisation (Copenhagen School) that taken together not everyone might share ? but which we think can be justified from particular readings of key texts in both schools. In particular, we contend that a middle ground requires reading the Copenhagen School as pursuing ?normative theory? and not simply ?objectivist method?, and of thinking about emancipation in terms of agency rather than end states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]