Pretorius, Joelien(University of the Free State, 2008)
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Abstract:
This article traces the politics of meaning-fixing with respect to the role
of the defence force as apartheid declined from the mid-1980s, as it was negotiated
from a current to a past organising principle of the “security imaginary” in the period
1990 to 1994 and as the post-apartheid period commenced after the 1994 elections.
This article proposes the notion of a security imaginary as a heuristic
tool for exploring military isomorphism (the phenomenon that
weapons and military strategies begin to look the same across the
world) at a time when the US model of defence transformation is
being adopted by an increasing number of countries. Built on a critical
constructivist foundation, the security-imaginary approach is contrasted
with rationalist and neo-institutionalist ways of explaining
military diffusion and emulation. Merging cultural and constructivist
themes, the article offers a ‘strong cultural’ argument to explain why a
country would emulate a foreign military model and how this model is
constituted in and comes to constitute a society’s security imaginary.