Abstract

Taking its main cues from Critical Security Studies, this chapter asks some unconventional questions about somewhat unconventional subjects for a field that has traditionally been more inclined to centre states in its investigations. In so doing, it brings to light the concealed political commitments that are a part of any attempt to theorize security and which fix arbitrary limits on whom and what gets foregrounded in the security stories told. Placing particular emphasis on recovering agency and political subjecthood, one can see the crucial part played by other actors in both the everyday practices of security and it has come to be defined. One can better appreciate both the problems and promise of one’s own roles in producing security—and insecurity—in the ways it is approached, as students and scholars.