Paper short abstract:

Alternative Security Review is a new research initiative that intends to investigate security issues in the UK. Its goal is to invite more voices in the dialogue around ’security’ and make the UK a more welcoming, hopeful, and secure place for everyone.

Paper long abstract:

Who is telling the story of ‘security’ in the UK and from where do they get their data? This presentation seeks to address these questions by introducing ‘The Alternative Security Review’, a joint initiative of Rethinking Security and Coventry University. It aims to provide a counterbalance to the UK Government’s Integrated Review of Defence and Security, which focuses specifically on the military-security landscape, and not issues of post-Brexit and post-pandemic precarity, exploitation of global capitalism, and the heritage of British colonialism.

The presentation outlines how methods rooted in visual anthropology can provide a bottom-up perspective on the topic of ‘security’, a topic area which is often governed through policy elites. It will introduce the rationale for re-evaluating ‘security’ to encompass grassroots and local concerns in the UK (such as food, housing, job, health care insecurity), before sharing preliminary findings from the project’s first activity, a visual anthropology-based pilot project in Coventry. This aims to provoke a conversation about how we define ‘security’ in our lived existence, and how we can make the UK a more welcoming, hopeful, and secure place for everyone.