The triangle of security governance: Sovereignty, discipline and the ‘government of things’ in Olympic Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This article reconsiders contemporary urban security governance. Conceptually, it revisits Foucault’s governmentality lectures to comprehend how security governance is carried out in places where the use of digital security technologies co-exists with overly lethal and repressive forms of policing. The author advances his analysis by conceptualizing a triangle of security governance in which disciplinary powers of control, apparatuses of security and sovereign/necropower are at work simultaneously, complemented by a fourth dimension that takes into account what Foucault outlined in the lectures as the ‘government of things’, which is the sociotechnical relationship between the agency of humans and machines. Empirically, the article explores the technopolitical turn in urban security policies in the city of Rio de Janeiro in the wake of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. Using discourses that are embedded in globalized mega-event security standards and legacy claims, authorities in Rio promoted a narrative of new material and non-material security measures that were intended both to secure the World Cup and the Olympics and to help overcome permanently entrenched urban conflicts in the city. By critically analysing these two approaches of new material and non-material security measures, the author shows how new security technologies are perfectly integrated into a continuum of death politics in Rio de Janeiro in ways that are conceptually best appreciated by considering how the triangle of security governance works in the digital era.

Kritische Polizeiforschung

“…On the contrary, I am aware of the nuances and complexities of Rio's public security sector within which the police officers and the high ranked authorities must constantly improvise how to act, are themselves in danger or have no adequate answers for the reality they face. Yet, it is also clear that police work in Brazil is deeply entrenched in what I have elsewhere described as a politics of death (Pauschinger 2023).…”

“…More particularly I had privileged access to different divisions of the civil police and the mega-event security architecture. Whilst I have written about these experiences more extensively elsewhere (Pauschinger, 2023(Pauschinger, , 2020(Pauschinger, , 2019, I here highlight the very research experience with the police as such and write about common issues in ethnographic studies such as access, moral ambiguities and danger. The remainder of this chapter therefore sets out in four steps.…”

Militaries, militias and unicorns: platform authoritarianism in Brazil

“…The programs (and anti-programs) of action are always a "negotiation" process between the various actors involved, ranging from the human (the engineers, coders, users, manufacturers, vendors and advertisers) to the non-human(smartphones, computers, data networks, etc.). 9 For more on the public safety expenditure in Rio de Janeiro, seeCardoso (2016) andPauschinger (2017), and for more on the relationship between mega-events and expenses related to security technologies, seeBennet & Haggerty (2012) andGiulianotti & Klauser (2010).10 The ICCCs bring together in the same space the various institutions involved in public security.11 Technical overdetermination is the idea that the functioning of a given technological system is entirely embedded in the system itself, ignoring the central role played by its users/operators, which often leads to neglecting their training process, in turn leading to problems in the system's functioning.12 This was a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti, led by the Brazilian Army. Although it is not possible to further develop this line of thinking in the present article, MINUSTAH also was an important moment for understanding the rise of militarized managerialism.…”