Security Dialogue 0(0) 1–17 © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0967010612457973 sdi.sagepub.com 457973 0 0 10.1177/0967010612457973Security DialogueStepputat: Knowledge production in the security–development nexus Corresponding author: Finn Stepputat Email: fst@diis.dk Knowledge production in the security–development nexus: An ethnographic reflection Finn Stepputat Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark Abstract This article contributes to the analysis of transnationalized forms of security governance in the postcolonial world by looking into the production of knowledge aimed at increasing coherence between domains of security and development in Western donor policies. The article takes an ethnographic approach to the analysis of knowledge production, using the author’s personal experience of writing a policy analysis for a donor government concerning how to ‘further improve’ the policy of ‘concerted civil–military planning and action’. This attempt to ‘study up’ and analyse upstream practices involved in transnational security governance shows the degree to which policy-related knowledge production is a negotiated, social process that involves informal practices and defensive tactics. The policy process seems to be less concerned with effects on the ground than with the problem of creating unity among the wide range of agents and institutions involved in the emerging policy field.While such an approach may have potentially destabilizing effects – both for policy narratives and for researchers’ authority – it responds to calls for reflections on the politics of representation and writing in studies of international relations. Keywords ethnography, identity, international security, war, knowledge production Introduction This article contributes to the analysis of transnationalized forms of security governance in the postcolonial world by looking into the production of knowledge aimed at increasing coherence between domains of security and development in Western donor policies. The project of coher- ence has emerged as something like a state discourse across a range of civilian and military institutions, involving programmatic changes in conceptual frameworks, strategies, practices and institutional setups. The project targets in particular unruly areas of the global south and have been used to exemplify and discuss the so-called security–development nexus. 1 Whereas Special Issue on Governing (in)security in the postcolonial world