ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a brief historical conceptualization of energy security, and discusses how the current literature approaches energy security. It offers a theoretical discussion of security along a two-track approach that first discusses how the security literature describes security and then moves on to analyse what security does. The book analyses the linguistic arguments and the performativity of concepts, and then continues by introducing new materialist understandings of the role of matter within such a performative epistemological understanding. It offers an illustration that utilizes some of these theoretical insights to reflect on the constitution and reification of energy security, including its practical consequences. Finally, the book summarizes some of the main findings of energy security.
