ABSTRACT
Investigating the relationship of communication to security brings into play a tension between analyzing key characteristics of the discourse and holding security narratives accountable to democratic values in the pursuit of a positive peace. This tension is manifested variously throughout the chapters of the Handbook, raising a question of normative implications embedded in research of this kind. The point is not to eliminate the tension or to sacrifice careful description to the ends of critique. It is instead to call attention to the dynamic of security creep operating within narratives of strategic communication and the challenge of taking it sufficiently into account. This may be one of the most important lessons taught by this collection of scholarship when it is taken as a whole and placed in conversation with itself.
