ABSTRACT
Narrative, if only temporarily, arrests meaning. The fixing of meaning by security narratives is of particular interest for International Relations (IR), primarily because it tells us much about the conflict that can occur at the sites of contesting identity claims (cf. Stern 2005). If one scrutinizes the meaning of any concept, one cannot fail to note that it is only within a certain context or tradition that meaning can be produced. Examining the social construction of patriarchy, Nancy Hirschmann notes how rules and behaviors, once constructed, take on a life of their own-constituting a (new) reality. ‘‘These rules become constitutive not only of what women are allowed to do, but to be as well: how women are able to think and conceive of themselves, what they can and should desire, what their preferences are’’ (1996: 57). Similarly, security narratives limit how we can think security, whose security matters, and how it might be achieved.
