Anthropology of security and security in anthropology: Cases of counterterrorism in the United States

Abstract

In this article we propose a mode of analysis that allows us to consider security as a form distinct from insecurity, in order to capture the heterogeneity of security objects, logics and forms of action. We first develop a genealogy for the anthropology of security, demarcating four main approaches: violence and state terror; military, militarization, and militarism; para-state securitization; and what we submit as 'security assemblages.' Security assemblages move away from focusing on security formations per se, and how much violence or insecurity they yield, to identifying and studying security forms of action, whether or not they are part of the nation-state. As an approach to anthropological inquiry and theory, it is oriented toward capturing how these forms of action work and what types of security they produce. We illustrate security assemblages through our fieldwork on counterterrorism in the domains of law enforcement, biomedical research and federal-state counter-extremism, in each case arriving at a diagnosis of the form of action. The set of distinctions that we propose is intended as an aid to studying empirical situations, particularly of security, and, on another level, as a proposal for an approach to anthropology today. We do not expect that the distinctions that aid us will suffice in every circumstance. Rather, we submit that this work presents a set of specific insights about contemporary US security, and an example of a new approach to anthropological problems.

Security or Safety: Quantitative and Comparative Analysis of Usage in Research Works Published in 2004–2019

“…The highest relevance of the "state" category in research publications can confirm the assumption about "securitization" of the safety discourse. In the anthropological research that set forward the idea of securitization [11], security involves maintaining the regulatory order in society via producing various threats and threat protection [9] (p. 282) by government order and control [10] (p. 487), whereas key security issues include health threats, safety of the urban environment, production of fears, criminalized groups, migrant threats, terrorism and extremism, forces and institutes of security [11,12]. However, in the light of their usage both with "security" and "safety", the categories "health" and "education" also confirm the assumption about securitization.…”

‘Why Do We Need Your Research?’

“…Etnofoor (2015), Conflict and Society (2017), Qualitative Sociology (2017), and Anthropological Theory (2017) -and articles (e.g. Samimian-Darash and Stalcup (2016) have been published on this subject.…”

“…Goldstein (2010), for example, unpacks the 'security/rights conjuncture' (489) in his ground-breaking article, whereas Maguire et al (2014) zoom in on different experiences of (in)security. Elsewhere, Samimian-Darash and Stalcup (2016) propose an assemblage approach to security, whereas Maguire and Low (2019), drawing on Gusterson (2004), propagate the idea of the 'securityscape'. The spatial reign also emerges in Low and Maguire's (2019) approach, as well as in Glück and Low's (2017) proposition for a 'sociospatial framework' to understanding security.…”

Critical Security and Anthropology from the Middle East

“…It has also understood security both in its more traditional sense as a product of governance and state power and as “the experiential, affective, and embodied forms that security takes as it is produced in social life” (Glück and Low 2017, 286–87). Anthropologists have, therefore, increasingly begun to interrogate concepts of security and securitization generally (Diphoorn and Grassiani 2015), as well as in relation, for example, to the body (Maguire, Rao, Zurawski 2018), race (Browne 2015), policing (Fassin 2013), (counter)terrorism and border control (Samimian‐Darash and Stalcup 2016), and affect (Ochs 2011). The discipline has also responded to the U.S. government's efforts to militarize anthropology to aid its wars abroad, with debates surfacing around the Human Terrain System as one node in the discipline's contribution to the study of security (Forte 2011).…”