Security as Practice

This important text offers a full and detailed account of how to use discourse analysis to study foreign policy making. It provides an in-depth discussion of the methodology of discourse analysis and a poststructuralist theory of the relationship between identity and foreign policy. Part I examines the concept of identity and the intertextual relationship between official foreign policy discourse and oppositional and media discourses. It explains how genres can be as significant as having authority and knowledge when authors and politicians seek to establish themselves. Lene Hansen also presents and explains a theory of the construction of identity in foreign policy debates and demonstrates how competing discourses destabilize each other and how the dynamic of self versus other, pervades the process of foreign policy making. Part II applies discourse analytical theory and methodology to a detailed analysis of the Western debate on the Bosnian war. This analysis includes a historical genealogy ofthe Western construction of the Balkans as well as readings of the official British and American policies, the debate in the House of Commons and the US Senate, Western media representations, academic debates and travel writing and autobiography. Providing an introduction to discourse analysis and critical perspectives on international relations this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of international relations, security studies and research methodology.