ResumenEl artículo expone el sentido de la seguridad en la comunidad universitaria de la Universidad de Antioquia. Se describen los rasgos de la investigación de la cual hace parte y la manera como el tema de investigación y el lugar en el cual se llevó a cabo propiciaron la ampliación de los objetivos y marcaron una ruta teórica y metodológica. A partir del enfoque de "securitización" y de una formulación básica según la cual la (in)seguridad es una construcción colectiva, se exploran diversos factores que intervienen en la definición de la situación en el campus universitario. El artículo concluye que por más discordante que siga siendo el significado atribuido a la "inseguridad", hay hechos con respecto a los cuales la definición es convergente y que, además, en los últimos años la interpretación pertenece cada vez más a los propios universitarios y no a la voluntad de agentes externos.
Securitization theory seeks to explain the politics through which (1) the security character of public problems is established, (2) the social commitments resulting from the collective acceptance that a phenomenon is a threat are fixed and (3) the possibility of a particular policy is created. In the last decade, research on securitization has grown significantly. The aim of this article is to evaluate the achievements of securitization theory. First, its main concepts and premises are critically discussed. This article then proceeds to examine the empirical applications of securitization theory to a broad range of issues, as well as the theoretical implications of these studies. Finally, it discusses the main challenges faced by securitization scholars and puts forward strategies to overcome them. This article develops three inter-related arguments. First, notably thanks to empirical studies, securitization theory has significantly developed beyond its initial focus on the speech act. Second, as a result, the distinctiveness of securitization theory currently lies in its capacity to articulate a specific approach to security – influenced by the speech act – with an ‘analytics of government’, which emphasizes practices and processes. Third, securitization theory faces three types of challenges, related, respectively, to theory, method and methodology. The capacity of scholars to overcome those will strongly influence the extent to which securitization theory will be able to make significant contributions to the debates in Security Studies and International Relations in the years to come.
This article takes up where securitization theory left off, arguing that securitization can occur or evolve without the assent of an identifiable audience. To explain this puzzle, the article proposes that rather than investigating the construction of threats at the level of discourse, we should focus on the functions and implications of policy instruments used to meet a public problem (e.g. terrorism). In order to substantiate the framework offered here, the article examines the primary tool in the EU's fight against terrorism, information exchange. The conclusion suggests that the consequences of counter-terrorism have been de-politicization, intelligence-led policing and cross-pillarization.
Practices refer to collective and historic acts that shaped the evolution of the fundamental distinction used to define the field of security—that of internal vs. external security. In general, security practices relate to two kinds of tools through which professionals of (in)security think about a threat: regulatory tools, which seek to “normalize” the behavior of target individuals (for example, policy regulation, constitution), and capacity tools, specific modalities for imposing external discipline upon individuals and groups. The roots of the distinction between internal and external security are embedded in a historical process of competition over where to draw the line between the authority and limits of diverse agencies. Much of the international relations (IR) literature ignores the diversity of security practices, and reduces security to an IR problem detached from other bodies of knowledge. This is an error that needs to be corrected. Security and insecurity must be analyzed not only as a process but also as the same process of (in)securitization. The term “security” cannot be considered as a concept capable of capturing a coherent set of practices, but rather the result of a process of (in)securitization. Research on security practices opens a variety of promising paths, but at least three challenges need to be met before this potential can be realized: a sustained development of cross-disciplinary studies; address the “sacrifice” entailed in definitions of security; and more time to elucidating as clearly as possible processes of resistance from those who are the target of these practices.
This article argues that some core tenets of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) can serve as heuristics for a better understanding of what the stakes of cyber-security are, how it operates, and how it fails. Despite the centrality of cyber-incidents in the cyber-security discourse, researchers have yet to understand their link to, and affects on politics. We close this gap by combining ANT insights with an empirical examination of a prominent cyber-incident (Stuxnet). We demonstrate that the disruptive practices of cyber-security caused by malicious software (malware), lie in their ability to actively perform three kinds of space (regions, networks, and fluids), each activating different types of political interventions. The article posits that the fluidity of malware challenges the consistency of networks and the sovereign boundaries set by regions, and paradoxically, leads to a forceful re-enactment of them. In this respect, the conceptualisation of fluidity as an overarching threat accounts for multiple policy responses and practices in cyber-security as well as attempts to (re-)establish territoriality and borders in the virtual realm. While this article concentrates on cyber-security, its underlying ambition is to indicate concretely how scholars can profitably engage ANT’s concepts and methodologies.
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