ABSTRACT
This chapter deploys the groundwork for studying the identities of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs). The interest of scholars and practitioners in how PMSCs are perceived connects to and echoes recent trends in the business literature more generally, where scholars increasingly pay attention to commercial branding as well as reputation building. The chapter delineates what people take to be the dominant identities of PMSCs, starting with the identity of the military, moving on to that of business, and deals with the humanitarian identity, which companies increasingly claim for themselves. Of the three different identities that PMSCs project, the business identity seems to be the most familiar, as compared with the military and humanitarian identities. The questions of who is a humanitarian and what is characteristic of a humanitarian mindset are increasingly subject to debate, owing to the influx of new actors in this field and the changing conditions of humanitarian aid.
