Beyond Risk: Premediation and the Post-9/11 Security Imagination

Goede, Marieke de

doi:10.1177/0967010608088773

Cited by 198 publications

(96 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…This argument has been made about political identity and danger in foreign policy by Campbell (1993). De Goede (2008), Muller (2008b), and other critical scholars have made similar arguments about professional and international constructions of risk and threat. However, more research must be conducted on how the successful construction of security threats or risks feeds into processes of securitization.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Securitization and desecuritization: a dramaturgical analysis of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority

2008

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Securitization theory has evolved over the past 10-15 years and has fuelled much exciting research, demonstrated through recent contributions by Balzacq, Stritzel, Taurek, and Floyd. Despite a growing number of case studies of successful securitization and desecuritization processes, scholars have retained the statist view of securitization: actors identify an existential threat that requires emergency executive powers, and, if the audience accepts the securitizing move, the issue is depoliticized and is considered a 'security' issue outside the rules of normal politics. This article demonstrates that there are multiple settings of securitizing moves and parses the audience within securitization theory, suggesting a model of at least four distinct types of audiences and speech contexts (popular, elite, technocratic, and scientific). The process of securitization is not a moment of binary decision but rather an iterative, political process between speaker and audience. We must not ask, 'was a securitizing move made' but 'how does a securitizing move mean?' Particularly if one adopts a more interventionist or activist notion of scholarship, a key question for experts must be: how are securitizing moves accepted or rejected? What are the politics of that successful process of (de)securitization? Using dramaturgical analysis, we suggest that securitizing moves take place within different sociological settings that operate with unique rules, norms, and practices. The example of the Canadian Air Transport Security Association is provided.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Securitization and desecuritization: a dramaturgical analysis of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority

2008

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“…This is the domain of what Masco (2006, page 16) calls a`prolific' imagination, which is committed to``resolutely conjuring up, and then institutionally preparing for, the very worst.'' As Boyle and Haggerty (forthcoming) note, here, that risk assessment is``invigorated with cultural constructions and speculative popular imaginations about what could potentially transpire'' (see also de Goede, 2008). There are a wide variety of`worst-case' techniques and methods used in security and the environment, many of which share conceptual, technological, or mathematical lineage (cf Clarke, 1999).…”

Section: Preemption Precautionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Precaution, Preemption: Arts and Technologies of the Actionable Future

2009

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``Global warming is now a weapon of mass destruction. It kills more people than terrorism, yet Blair and Bush do nothing.'' Houghton (2003)`N ow the invasion is upon us, surely we can delay no longer. We need to go at the task [of climate change] as though we are mobilising for war. In an unnecessarily great hurry.'' Leggett (2007) Imagining the worst The apocalypse looms ever nearer. Irreversible climate change, the threat of global terrorism, conflicts and wars over declining natural resources, the mobile avian flu carried by migratory birds, all resound to the fears prevalent in political and popular discourse in the 21st century (at least in the`developed world'). Whichever threat is conceived most pressing, there is a shortage of time in which to act, an immensity of tasks to accomplish, and the absolute necessity of taking precautionary action to prevent the very worst. The threats are both ultimately manageable with the relevant action, but also feared to be inherently unstable and potentially catastrophic, requiring precaution and investments in risk modelling. Managing the global future is legitimated under conditions of`extreme uncertainty' with these`total threats' that are, for Swyngedouw (2007), vague, ambiguous, but homogeneous. The presumed apocalyptic potential of contemporary threats thus underpins the call for precautionary, or preemptive, political action. The`precautionary principle' has become a central element of environmental politics, where it is increasingly accepted that regulatory action must be taken even if scientific evidence concerning the imminence and precise nature of threats remains disputed (Majone, 2002, page 90; Sunstein, 2003, pages 1005^1008). This principle, put simply, holds that``uncertainty is no excuse for inaction against serious or irreversible risks, [and] that absence of evidence

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“…This article aims to contribute to such critical exposure of resilience as a method of 'governing through insecurity' (Lentzos & Rose 2009). In particular, the paper speaks to literatures on the turn towards imagination, pre-mediation and the performance of event-preparedness scenarios in security practice (Amoore & De Goede 2008;Anderson & Adey 2012;Aradau & Van Munster 2011;De Goede 2008) and the biopolitical literature on resilience which highlights the phenomena of governing through the event of disaster/insecurity. These literatures have both highlighted that security technologies are now governing through the spectre of the event, through insecurity itself.…”

Section: Conceptualising Resilience Situating the Bombsitementioning

confidence: 99%

Securing through the failure to secure? The ambiguity of resilience at the bombsite

Heath-Kelly

2015

Security Dialogue

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Resilience discourses resignify uncertainty and insecurity as the means to attain security. Security failure is resignified as productive and becomes part of the story about security learning and improvements in anticipatory capability. In this article, I explore questions of failure mediation and ‘securing through insecurity’. If resilience policies suggest that failure and insecurity can be mediated and redeployed in the cause of success, what becomes of visceral sites of security failure such as the terrorist bombsite? This article focuses on a site where security agencies failed to prevent the bombing of a packed nightclub in Bali, in order to explore ambiguity of failure in the resilience era. It considers the efforts of politicians and activists to perform the site as resilient, and the spatial and temporal excess which eludes this performance. The article contributes to critical literatures on resilience by showing, through the ambiguities of resilience at the bombsite, that resilience is a chimera with regards to its supposed incorporation of insecurity.

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Beyond Risk: Premediation and the Post-9/11 Security Imagination

Cited by 198 publications

References 43 publications

Securitization and desecuritization: a dramaturgical analysis of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority

Securitization and desecuritization: a dramaturgical analysis of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority

Precaution, Preemption: Arts and Technologies of the Actionable Future

Securing through the failure to secure? The ambiguity of resilience at the bombsite

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