Paper short abstract:

Scholars of security-, securitization- and risk studies as well as STS based security- and bio(in)security- studies tend to create borderlines around our respective fields. This paper aims to creating borderlands; sites for productive encounters between various strands of security and risk studies.

Paper long abstract:

Scholars working within various schools of security studies (some also attending to matters of insecurity), securitization studies, sociology of risk and STS based security-, biosecurity- and bioinsecurity studies tend to work within, and to create, borderlines around, our respective academic fields. Through studies on biosecurity in agriculture, the distinction between borderlines and borderlands has been addressed (Hinchliffe et al. 2012). The common trust in spatial segregation and closure as means for biosecurity and disease prevention is being challenged by highlighting the relational contingencies within, or, with reference to Barad (2007), the importance of intra-actions, in regards to disease emergence. This paper suggest a reflexive turn: By interrogating academic borderlines and exploring the sometimes awkward relations between academic neighbours (Tsing 2005), this paper aims to create borderlands - sites for productive encounters between various strands of security and risk studies and for critical reflection on our intra-actions, that is our ways of relating within our academic comfort zones. The purpose is to contribute to organize a better analytical "tool box" for understanding the things that (come to) matter (Latour 2005) as (in)security and risk issues - and how to handle these. The paper draws on experiences from an on-going project where the author is involved. The project serves as a borderland where sociologists and STS scholars with heterogeneous approaches to (in)security collaborate with humanitarian workers, it-experts, computer scientists and developers in order to contribute to increased resilience by means of volunteer networks for emergency and disaster relief.