ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book highlights the methodological diversity, and also some of the specific difficulties, involved in researching Non-State Actors and Processes in International Security (NAPIS). It argues that an 'encyclopaedias in the making' approach to methods matters generally, but especially for NAPIS research. The book then proceeds to develop the argument by looking more closely at its significance for answering, but also for asking, questions about NAPIS. NAPIS research crosses the great divides: inside/outside, public/private, civil/military, state/market, created by the historically complex and contextually varied emergence of modern social political thought that has stabilized the state's monopoly on symbolic violence to which these categorical divides are pivotal. The methodological perspective of NAPIS research, which is of relevance not only for the growing NAPIS research community but for scholarship, research and the critical political and social theory well beyond it.
