Afterword: Engendering Knowledge and Shifting the Spaces of “Private Security” and “Global Politics”

The afterword frames the contributions of the volume’s chapters in terms of four central themes of feminist research—(in)visibility, materiality, affect, and expertise. It argues that by engaging these themes from a distinctly feminist perspective the book does far more than provide a “gender perspective” on private security in global politics. Instead, the chapters take the reader along paths that cross the disciplinary boundaries between gender studies, global politics/international relations (IR), and private security studies. More than this, walking the feminist paths traced by the chapters in the book shows the disciplinary landscapes in a new light. It plants new curiosities, questions, and arguments in their midst. The chapters in this book therefore unsettle the disciplinary topography or spaces that we rely on to know about “gender,” “private security,” and “global politics.” The volume thus engenders knowledge in ways that shift disciplinary spaces.