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vernacular Securities and their study Lee Jarvis, Swansea University l.jarvis@swansea.ac.uk

vernacular Securities and their study Lee Jarvis, Swansea University l.jarvis@swansea.ac.uk. 22 January 2013. Overview. Focus: Research on public conceptions of ‘security’ Overview: Project outline Trends in contemporary security studies Project design and methodology

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vernacular Securities and their study Lee Jarvis, Swansea University l.jarvis@swansea.ac.uk

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  1. vernacular Securities and their studyLee Jarvis, Swansea Universityl.jarvis@swansea.ac.uk 22 January 2013

  2. Overview • Focus: • Research on public conceptions of ‘security’ • Overview: • Project outline • Trends in contemporary security studies • Project design and methodology • ‘Vernacular securities’ and their importance • Conclusion: • Academic, political and policy relevance of ‘vernacular security’ studies

  3. Anti-terrorism, citizenship and security in the UK • 2009-2011 project in England and Wales • 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 public conceptions of AT, security and citizenship • Pertinence of 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 • Variable selection: • Overwhelming focus on religious (esp. Muslim) identities in the context of anti-terrorism policy

  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 • Claims to statistical representativeness, clearly, untenable • But, focus group method does permit analysis of: • ‘Lay’ understandings and articulations of (in)security • Group dynamics within conversation, and rigidity of conceptions • Significance of particular sources of knowledge

  7. CCTV cameras and (in)securitization • Participant 1: But you guys, don’t you think it’s more safe and secure, they’re doing that. I mean, it’s our housing, isn’t it? • Participant 2: No, it’s an invasion of privacy. • Participant 1: It’s an invasion of privacy, but there is some sense of security, because there are some loonies out there. • Participant 2: It’s not for our security though, it’s for others

  8. Security to securities • Considerable heterogeneity across the UK: • 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 far more useful • 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’ (Buzan & Hansen, 2009), e.g. equality

  9. Security and positionality • Security as a mechanism for locating the self: • Articulating one’s place within external worlds: material, social, and political • 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 • Equality, freedom and insecurity: political – support for or opposition to values, projects and their consequences

  10. 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” • Typically, one of two reasons: • Recognition of security’s complexity, and therefore potential plurality. • Or, consideration of contemporary security practices and technologies. • ‘Security’ may have potential for forms of encounter or political imagination removed from the scepticism of contemporary debate.

  11. Conclusion • Speaking on the security of others should involve speaking with others. • Even in ‘progressive’ or ‘critical’ projects • Intellectual relevance: • Bridging contemporary literatures on security • Assessing the resonance of academic developments • Policy relevance: • Contemporary emphasis on public perceptions of (in)security • Integration of publics into security projects • Political relevance: • ‘Security’ as contested terrain • In public usage, at least, not straightforward, objective or calculable

  12. Thank you for your time

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