ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the security fair is both a transmission belt for and a shaper of security practices and discourses. It examines the effects of the encounter between the micro-politics of the fair and the macro-politics of war and security. The chapter unfolds the process through which input from manufacturers is turned into output and solutions for buyers of security technologies. It explores the security fair as a globalized platform for the transmission of security technologies and a venue where the meaning and purpose of security is negotiated. The chapter introduces the phenomenon and development of security fairs, before showing how they are a form of translation of security and field-configuring events. Security fairs are excellent venues for exploring states' comparative advantages and their national defence and security visions. In practice the marketplace is both a space of collaboration and competition, and of national interests, globalized ideas and fragmented alliances.
