Introduction

The aim of any Handbook should be to be as comprehensive as possible within the given space. At the same time, however, a volume such as this one can never be more than a snapshot of a rich landscape from a specific vantage point. Even with a broader panoramic format, there are limits to the details that can be shown. On the other hand, if our image were to consist of very detailed close-ups in order to be as inclusive as possible, the landscape around us would still be constantly changing while we were completing the picture. In essence, we would never finish the perfect ‘shoot’. At the same time, the selection of a vantage point from where to take a snapshot, a panorama picture or several close-ups also means choosing an angle of view – and this means willingly or unwillingly including some things, while excluding others. Therefore, this introduction aims to describe both the landscape and the reason why a

specific vantage point was chosen. The language of geography, of borders and of demarcations fits this undertaking well. A recent article on the birth of International Relations (IR) theory states that ‘the role of a demarcation line is to put an end to territorial conflict’ (Guilhot 2008: 281). But then again, the drawing of the demarcation line is also often the main cause of conflict; the history of Security Studies can be read as one littered with territorial conflict because of such ‘line drawing’ and subsequent inclusions/exclusions. There is no escaping the fact that this Handbook is inadvertently part of such conflicts, be they dormant or fought in the open, by the very stance it takes. One of the most prominent and identity shaping (though more or less resolved) con-

flicts in the field is what we might call the ‘traditionalists vs. wideners-deepeners conflict’. This is a debate which mainly raged in the early 1990s, though earlier exponents of the debate can easily be identified (cf. Brown 1977; Ullman 1983; Matthews 1989). The main bone of contention was the move by an ever-growing group of researchers to expand Security Studies beyond ‘the study of the threat, use and control of military force’ (Walt 1991: 212). Traditionalists did not believe that the security landscape had changed to a degree where Walt’s definition had to be adjusted, and therefore called for a continued approach to security (often labelled ‘strategic studies’) from the viewpoint of the nation-state and interstate war, allegedly for the sake of conceptual clarity and theoretical parsimony (cf. Mearsheimer 1995; Chapman 1992). The wideners, on the other

hand, have added economic, societal, political and environmental risks to the military threats that dominated classical scholarship in this field (Westing 1989; Buzan 1991). The deepeners, in turn – often the same individuals as the wideners – are concerned with adding additional units of analysis to the traditional state-centric view; most explicitly, they have introduced the idea that there are five levels of depth to security: international systems, international subsystems, units, subunits and individuals (Buzan et al. 1998: 5f.; see also Booth 1991; Falk 1995). The lack of consensus on the meaning of security was at the heart of the line-drawing

and hence at the core of the conflict between traditionalists and wideners-deepeners. Many have observed over the years that security is a contested concept or even an ‘essentially contested’ one (Baldwin 1997; Buzan 1991). But not only that: security is also a condition; and because it is a condition, it is imbued with values and emotions. Therefore, security is not only a contested concept, but it is also about contested values, while being a normative enterprise in itself (Kolodziej 2005: 2). Strong subjectivity is an inevitable side effect of this – and therefore, security will always mean different things to different people. In 1991, Barry Buzan identified 12 different definitions of security that important analysts have produced (Buzan 1991: 16), one of the more prominent examples being Arnold Wolfers’s early definition that ‘security, in an objective sense, measures the absence of threats to acquired values, in a subjective sense, the absence of fear that such values will be attacked’ (Wolfers 1952: 485). Since then, the definitions of security have multiplied considerably beyond the 12 identified by Buzan; and security has fittingly been called ‘a Tower of Babel’ (Kolodziej 2005: 11), indicating both towering piles of texts and a great confusion as to the meaning of the conceptual foundations at the same time. In addition, the tower continues to grow: Security Studies have not only undergone

significant change during the past 20 years, they can also be said to be one of the most dynamic areas of IR today. Worldwide, there are more undergraduate and graduate students in this field than ever before, partly as a result of the 11th September 2001 attacks in the US and the ensuing ‘Global War on Terror’ that has led to renewed security concerns across the globe (Wæver and Buzan 2007: 384). Judging from the number of texts published in recent years, it also seems to constitute a growth market in the academic book industry.1