The evens of 9/11 and the following anthrax attacks fuelled the fear of various non-traditional means through which malicious non-state actors may threaten states and societies. In this light, the deadlocked debate on biological weapons was reopened on the international scene. Driven by the concerns about the powerful, yet ‘uncontrollable’ science, the scientific knowledge on dual-use biological agents has been designated a potential threat and the circulation of this knowledge has been subjected to new security practices. Based on securitization theory and certain insights from field analysis and actor-network theory, this paper seeks to critically reflect on this new form of science-security nexus and its global dynamics. Specifically, the paper shall develop a theoretical and analytical framework for studying how scientific knowledge is conceptualized in security terms by different global actors involved in governing biosecurity and how this conceptualization travels and translates to new empirical contexts.
