`It Sounds Like a Riddle': Security Studies,the War on Terror and Risk

Abstract

A research programme on `reflexive security' is emerging, as a number of students of international security are applying sociological insights of `risk society' to understand new discourses and practices of security. This research note maps the current achievements and future challenges of this emerging research programme on risk arguing that it offers a way to overcome the debate about whether to apply a `broad' or `narrow' concept of security; a debate which is stifling the discipline's ability to appreciate the `war on terrorism' as an example of a new security practice. Discussing the nature of strategy in a risk environment, the paper outlines the consequences for applying the concept of reflexive rationality to strategy. Doing so, I address some of the concerns on how to study `reflexive security' previously raised by Shlomo Griner in Millennium.