The beginning of chapter 1 briefly laid out four central questions that have been at the centre of ISS: Whose security should be protected and studied? Should the military be considered the primary sector of security? Should security be concerned exclusively with external threats or also with domestic ones? And, is the only form of security politics one of threats, dangers and emergency? This chapter will examine these questions in further detail and add a fifth: What epistemologies and methodologies should be brought to the study of security?

The majority of writings in ISS do not go to great lengths to discuss their analytical, philosophical, normative and epistemological assumptions, but it is nevertheless important to have a good understanding of these issues. Specific approaches to security always presume answers to these questions, even if they are not explicitly argued. These answers set crucial boundaries not only for how security is defined, but also for what kind of research projects and analyses are carried out. The dominant concept of security in ISS has been the one of ‘national’/‘international’ security, it has been the concept of Realist Strategic Studies and it has been the concept that critical, widening perspectives have had to struggle with. This concept of security defines the state as the referent object, the use of force as the central concern, external threats as the primary ones, the politics of security as engagement with radical dangers and the adoption of emergency measures, and it studies security through positivist, rationalist epistemologies.