‘Crowded Places Are Everywhere We Go’: Crowds, Emergency, Politics

Abstract

Crowded places' have recently been problematized as objects of terrorist attacks. Following this redefinition of terrorism, crowds have been reactivated at the heart of a security continuum of counter-terrorism, emergency planning and policing. How does the crowd referent recalibrate security governance, and with what political effects? This article argues that several subtle reconfigurations take place. First, counter-terrorism governance derives the knowledge of crowds from 'generic events' as unexpected, unpredictable and potentially catastrophic. This move activates 19th-century knowledge about crowds as pathological, while the spatial referent of 'crowded places' reconfigures workplaces as crowded places and workers as crowds. Second, new guidance for emergency planning and policing deploys a more rational approach to crowds, put forward in recent psychosocial approaches. These modes of knowledge derive 'generic crowds' from normal social relations rather than extraordinary events. Generic events and generic crowds effectively depoliticize crowds, as they exclude a more radical generic politics, in which crowds are not derivable, but negate determination.

Slow emergencies: Temporality and the racialized biopolitics of emergency governance

“…A range of work in geography and allied fields has traced the work emergency does in the advent and (re)production of existing and new forms, practices and relations of power. Stimulated by the 'war on terror', research has shown how contemporary liberal order is secured by governing through the logics of Emergency with a capital E (Adey 2016;Amin 2013;Agamben 2007;Anderson 2015;Aradau 2015;Cooper 2008;Dillon & Reid 2009;Grove 2013;Graham 2011;Massumi 2009). On the one hand, events or situations which are designated as emergencies are governed in ways that are designed to contain and curtail classes of events, and people that are designated as threats to an existing order.…”

Crowd surveillance: The (in)securitization of the urban body

“…The vulnerability of crowded places have been highlighted in contemporary emergency and counter-terrorism planning (Aradau, 2015;Coaffee et al, 2011;Drury et al, 2013). The UK Home Office (2014: 4), for example, has published the guideline 'Protecting Crowded Places' which problematizes crowded places as an attractive target for terrorism.…”

Interviewing Suspects with Avatars: Avatars Are More Effective When Perceived as Human

“…Automated deception detection is one of the biggest security challenges for the twenty-first century. More than ever, governments and border agencies are interested in fast, reliable and low-intrusive ways to detect deception in crowded and vulnerable places such as airports (Lu et al, 2010 ; Damos et al, 2013 ; Aradau, 2015 ). The main goal is to quickly filter out those who are low at risk and to flag potential deceit (Derrick et al, 2011 ; Twyman et al, 2014 ).…”