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Vernacular securities and their study Lee Jarvis l.jarvis@swansea.ac.uk

Vernacular securities and their study Lee Jarvis l.jarvis@swansea.ac.uk. Overview. Focus: Public conceptions of ‘security’ Overview: Project outline Contemporary security debate Research design and methodology ‘Vernacular securities’ and their importance Conclusion:

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Vernacular securities and their study Lee Jarvis l.jarvis@swansea.ac.uk

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  1. Vernacular securities and their studyLee Jarvisl.jarvis@swansea.ac.uk

  2. Overview Focus: Public conceptions of ‘security’ Overview: Project outline Contemporary security debate Research design and methodology ‘Vernacular securities’ and their importance Conclusion: Academic, political and policy relevance
  3. Anti-terrorism, citizenship and security in the UK Research project across six sites in England and Wales: Swansea, Llanelli, Oxford, Oldham, Birmingham, London http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/RES-000-22-3765/read Research questions: Public views of anti-terrorism (AT) powers Public conceptions of security and citizenship Connections between conceptions of AT, security and citizenship Experiential, demographic, and other factors Discursive logics, resources and strategies
  4. Security: referents and realities
  5. Project design Fourteen focus groups: Residence: Metropolitan/Non-metropolitan Self-designated ethnicity: Black/White/Asian Purposive sampling: Organisation sampling, snowballing, targeted advertising Methodological choices: Debate on impacts of AT policy dominated by: Focus on religious (esp. Muslim) identities Either abstract theoretical work, or large-scale, quantitative studies of public opinion
  6. Group design Open-ended questions On security: What kinds of security threat do people in this country face? What are the main issues or threats to your own security? How have threats to security changed over time? What does security mean to you? Who do you think is responsible for providing security? Validity No statistical representativeness But, focus group method: Thicker analysis of ‘lay’ articulations of (in)security Conversational dynamics Significance of particular sources and types of knowledge
  7. Security to securities Considerable heterogeneity : Recurrence of limited relevance, but none restricted to one group Participants also frequently moved between conceptions Geography & ethnic identity: limited explanatory purchase: Personal experiences and encounters appear more pertinent Greater purchase in other areas of the project (e.g. attitudes toward citizenship) Resonance of contemporary scholarship: Basic needs, communities, emancipation, securitization And, yet, sheds light on additional ‘adjacent concepts’, e.g. equality
  8. Security and positionality Security as a mechanism for locating the self: Articulating one’s place within material, social, and political life For example: Survival: corporeal subject with basic somatic and extra-somatic needs Belonging: ontological security – stable and rooted sense of identity Hospitality: locates the self socially – responsibilities to and from others Equality, freedom and insecurity: political – support for or opposition to values, projects and their consequences
  9. Security and empathy Discussing security often sparked reflection on others’ insecurity: “I do understand…our town 30 or 40 years ago was mostly English, wasn’t it, and now there are more and more other families and the children are growing up, and then they feel a bit threatened by too many foreigners” “I think if you were doing a survey, you know, in the middle of a huge city centre housing estate you would get a different perception of, you know, what frightens people, what people are concerned about” “I’m a black person, but gosh, if I was a Muslim, I think…I’d be even more nervous about travelling, even if I was an innocent person” ‘Security’ may have potential for forms of encounter or imagination unrecognised in contemporary debate.
  10. Conclusion Speaking on the security of others should involve speaking with others: Even – perhaps especially – in ‘progressive’ or ‘critical’ projects Academic relevance: Addressing contemporary security literatures Assessing the public resonance of academic debate Policy relevance: Emphasis on public feelings of (in)security, e.g. in policing statistics Integration of publics into security projects, e.g. terrorism hotlines Political relevance: ‘Security’ as contested terrain In public usage, at least, not straightforward, objective or calculable
  11. Thank you for your time Published version: Jarvis, L. & Lister, M. (2013) ‘Vernacular Securities and their Study: A Qualitative Analysis and Research Agenda’, International Relations 27(2): 158-179
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