ABSTRACT
This chapter shows to what degree contemporary thinking about world security has been caught within, but also has at least partly escaped from, the established rituals of debate about security. Four themes seem to be crucial. First is the extent to which conventional accounts of security depend on certain assumptions embodied in the principle of state sovereignty. Second is the extent to which this account of security has subsequently been fixed in the categories of modernist theories of international relations. Third is the extent to which the principle of state sovereignty, the concept of security, and the categories of international relations theory reflect and reproduce deeply entrenched assumptions about progressive political action. Fourth is the extent to which many of the most interesting attempts to reconstruct the meaning of security have been forced to place many of these cherished assumptions into question. Calls for a broader understanding of security are inevitably challenged by familiar forms of skepticism.
