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Abstract: Critical security scholars and securitization scholars in particular increasingly argue for a more context-sensitive approach to studying how security is constructed and performed in different social spheres. This article looks at the practice of threat construction in narrow and discursively-oriented environments, such as the United Nations Security Council, and discusses the prospects of conceptualizing and analysing this process empirically. Arguing that securitization in such a specific setting can be understood as a highly context-dependent practice of negotiating the meaning of threats, the paper develops a new approach to studying this kind of securitization. It builds on the advancements of securitization theory and deploys certain tools from framing theory to develop a new framework for a situated discourse analysis of securitization. This framework is then applied in an analysis of how terrorism was securitized in the Security Council after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
Keywords: securitization, threat framing, context, United Nations, terrorism
INTRODUCTION1
This article looks at the practice of threat construction in narrow and discursively-oriented social environments, such as the United Nations (UN) Security Council, and discusses the prospects of conceptualizing and analysing this process empirically. This article argues that the construction of threats in such an environment is best understood as strategically negotiated and highly context-dependent, given the structure of the power relations among the actors and the weight of the institutional, cultural and linguistic context in which these actors operate. Guided by the premise that '[s]ecurity is conceptualized and politically practised differently in different places and at different times' (Bubandt, 2005: 291), the paper builds on contextualist readings of securitization theory (e.g. Balzacq, 2005, 2011b; Ciuta, 2009; Salter, 2008; Stritzel, 2007) and aims to advance the methodological tools for studying securitization as a discursive practice. In order to reflect on the situated interplay of power, language and context (cf. Stritzel, 2012), the article develops a framework that systematically contextualizes the deliberative process of threat construction and provides new analytical tools for studying securitization as a 'situated interactive activity' (Balzacq, 2005: 179).
The paper makes two main contributions to constructivist and critical security studies. On the empirical level, it looks at the process of threat construction in the Security Council as an important yet under-researched political context in critical security...