Security researchers have long been trying to distil general rules or procedures of what societies regard as insecurity or risk. But not with standing ideas of a universal ‘security logic’ or standard ‘felicity conditions’ underlying successful threat constructions, this paper takes a contrary view. ‘Security’ is understood differently in different sociopolitical and cultural contexts; consequently, societal threat construction is not graspable by general rules. From a sociopragmatist perspective, acts of securitization can be understood as discursive processes which evolve through one or more ‘security repertoires’. These repertoires bundle and constrain shared ways of perceiving, arguing, and interpreting societal issues such as threat or risk perceptions. However, the use of ‘successful’ security repertoires which lead to the construction of societal threat images varies in diverse sociocultural settings. Hence, the concept addresses the difficulties to apply universal rules to securitization processes in the face of different social contexts.    «

Security researchers have long been trying to distil general rules or procedures of what societies regard as insecurity or risk. But not with standing ideas of a universal ‘security logic’ or standard ‘felicity conditions’ underlying successful threat constructions, this paper takes a contrary view. ‘Security’ is understood differently in different sociopolitical and cultural contexts; consequently, societal threat construction is not graspable by general rules. From a sociopragmatist perspecti...    »