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- Convenors:
-
Alexandra Schwell
(University of Klagenfurt)
Ana Ivasiuc
Monika Weissensteiner
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- 6 College Park (6CP), 01/037
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The state is both actor and addressee of (in)security. Yet, its security promise is challenged by non-state actors such as vigilante groups seeking to position themselves as alternative beacons of hope. The panel invites papers that address the role of the state for the production of (in)security.
Long Abstract:
In a globalized world under conditions of postindustrial transformations and increasing complexity, the state is only one among many actors that shape the lives and life chances of people and populations. Nevertheless, the national security community and its sovereignty play a crucial affective role beyond their actual meaning in international relations. At least in theory, the state holds a security promise for its members. At the same time, non-state actors such as vigilante or neighbourhood watch groups thwart the state's production of security in complex and often contradictory ways, seeking to position themselves as alternative beacons of hope and forcing the state to adapt its (in)security narrative. The state is both an actor and addressee of (in)security; it produces both security and insecurity policies, narratives, and imaginaries; it is the recipient and legitimizer of security demands and concerns.
The panel invites ethnographically informed papers that address the relation between the state and (in)security and ask:
- Beyond securitization theory, what becomes a state security issue and how? Which strategies are used to implement and legitimize security policies?
- What is the role of trust in security agencies and forces?
- How can we conceptualize reconfigurations of state sovereignty in the field of (transnational) security practices?
- How is the state's relation to vigilante groups who seek to challenge, substitute, or counteract the state?
- How does the state actively create and perpetuate politics of (in)security and emergency narratives? How does it act as a broker and moderator of (in)security feelings?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 July, 2022, -Ana Ivasiuc
Paper short abstract:
The state engages ambivalently with practices of informal policing in Europe. Using ethnographic data on a neighborhood patrol in Italy and data on German Bürgerwehren and on Dutch burgerwachten, I analyze the state-(un)making practices of informal policing.
Paper long abstract:
Informal policing is on the rise in Europe: ‘concerned citizens’ mobilize increasingly for the protection of their spaces – neighborhood or border areas, or abstract spaces like the country or imagined communities. Informal policing ranges from the unobtrusive observation of a space through neighborhood watch schemes, where residents linked through social media alert each other and the police on suspicious presence, to more organized forms of patrolling. Some of the groups involved in such activities border on vigilantism. Many of the groups patrolling urban spaces or borderlands in different countries display political orientations towards the extreme right spectrum. The spatial scales at which ‘security formations’ of vigilant citizens operate are crucial for the anthropological study of security and of the state. I follow Abrams (1988) in analytically separating the state into its idea and its institutions, and examine how practices of informal policing are productive on both dimensions. While these groups propagate narratives of a failed state and the need for citizens to ‘take things in their own hands’, state institutions respond ambivalently to the proliferation of such practices. Often, the state response to such practices entails a strengthening of the state’s control through support given to forms of informal policing that are less threatening to its own monopoly of violence, such as neighborhood watch programs. By using ethnographic data gathered on a neighborhood patrol in Italy and data on German Bürgerwehren and on Dutch burgerwachten, I analyze how practices of informal policing are simultaneously and ambivalently state-(un)making practices.
Nadja Maurer (Research Centre for Strategic Police Research (FOSPOL)) Nils Zurawski (Universität Hamburg)
Paper short abstract:
In a neighbourhood in St. Pauli-Süd, conflicts between police and residents regularly escalate. One of the points of contention is a police task force deployed to combat publicly perceivable drug-related crime. Locally the police are accused of racial profiling.
Paper long abstract:
The conflict between police and residents has grown historically and it is part of the identity and self-image of the local scene to be against the police. Squatting in the 1980s, a fear of eviction due to urban redevelopment, and violent confrontations with the police during demonstrations shaped an enmity towards the police. In addition, the neighbourhood is highly frequented by crowds of visitors and events; the Reeperbahn is within walking distance. This requires, or rather enables, extra police powers. Around the Balduintreppe there has been an established drug market for years; at peak times there are over 50 dealers in the place. The dealers are mostly of West African origin. After the police set up a task force to curb the drug trade, they are accused of racism. Changes at the macro level in recent years have been higher migration pressure and changes in criminal law on drug trafficking. The police are part of the problem and part of the solution. The convergence of unresolved socio-political issues is dumped on the police. The police, in turn, have only police instruments as a mandate and as an option for action, such as checks on persons, expulsions, identity checks, which they overuse in order to handle the situation to satisfy (political) superiors as well as demands for regulatory measures from parts of the population.
Alexandra Schwell (University of Klagenfurt)
Paper short abstract:
The paper scrutinizes the Austrian blackout campaign, which asks citizens to prepare for "Day X". It explores how state agencies and political actors create a sense of urgency and engage citizens in an emotional regime that reifies the citizen-state-relationship through a process of securitization.
Paper long abstract:
In 2022, the Austrian state launched a nationwide blackout preparedness campaign asking citizens to prepare for Day X, "when the lights go out". The paper explores how Austrian government agencies sensitize the population to the severity of the threat of a Europe-wide blackout – a population weary of the pandemic but having grown used and sensitive to stockpiling.
The paper scrutinises how the concept of urgency informs blackout disaster scenarios and public campaigns. For security scholars, urgency is a pivotal yet so far under-researched concept. Urgency is an essential element of securitization processes that present imagined threats as imminent. As a political practice, it is crucial for the mobilization of insecurities and fears. The urgency of a problem is formulated in the present but contains projections for a potentially apocalyptic future scenario. At the same time, the invocation of urgency is linked to the hope of a better future if the disaster can be averted in the present.
Studying the blackout campaign and its agents, the paper links the concepts of urgency to the study of emotions and temporality. It analyses how the Austrian state aims at convincing its citizens not only of the urgency of blackout preparation but also how it uses urgency to create a shared responsibility between state and citizen. It combines state, national, and individual security in emotional politics, thus creating the subject of the "resilient citizen".
Alena Zelenskaia (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on the Daniel Trottier's notions of surveillance (2012) and “digital vigilantism” (2017), this paper proposes a methodological framework to reveal and describe the ingroup vigilance that intends to detect threats in international marriages.
Paper long abstract:
Under the pressure of law, that restricts extra-legal enforcement, many offline vigilant activities were translated online - into doxing, flagging, investigating, public shaming, leaking etc. Social media users often (re)formulate state security policies and act online as non-state actors on behalf on national states.
This article critically examines discourses on marriages between German men and women from Third countries that users articulate on one of the most popular Facebook groups of Russian-speaking migrants in Germany. Drawing on the Daniel Trottier's notions of surveillance (2012) and “digital vigilantism” (2017), a total of 114 wall posts and 24, 915 comments was subdivided into 5 large categories and qualitatively analyzed. The paper proposes a methodological framework to reveal and describe the ingroup vigilance that intends to detect threats in international marriages. The analysis shows that Facebook vigilant discourses are interlinked with micro level stereotypes both in Germany and in Russia as well as macro level regulations, where marriage is seen as a migration strategy and a misuse of intimate relationships. To a certain extent commentators function as guardians of the German migration system being simultaneously critical about Merkel’s migration policies. Attitudes towards migrant partners bear features of gender and nationalistic discrimination.
* Trottier, D. 2012. Social Media as Surveillance. Routledge: London and New York.
Trottier, D. 2017. Digital vigilantism as weaponisation of visibility. Philosophy & Technology, 30(1), 55–72.