ASC Seminar by Thomas Kirsch: Securing security. Thoughts on the Proliferation of ‘Security' in South Africa (and Elsewhere)

Drawing on ethnographic case studies on crime and crime prevention in present-day urban South Africa, this seminar starts out from the empirical observation that, once they have been implemented, security measures like the employment of CCTV cameras, security guards or barbed-wire fences need to be secured if they are to be maintained in the face of potentially adversarial forces. It is for this reason that security measures are not self-supporting stand-alones but embedded in and sustained by further security linkages. Diverse ethnographic examples will show that this process entails a “rooting" of security in the specific sociocultural contexts in which it is brought to bear. It deals  with the recursive dynamic of "securing security”, thus addressing a seemingly paradoxical way in which security agendas proliferate through a capillary permeation of ever more domains of life in South Africa (and elsewhere). Please note this seminar begins at 11.00 instead of the customary 15.30. Please register

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