Imagining Security

• NCJ Number: 217826
• Author(s): Jennifer Wood; Clifford Shearing
• Date Published: 2007
• Length: 193 pages
• Sale Source: Willan Publishing
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This book explores the way in which the governance of security (policing) is imagined and how these imaginings can be diffused internationally into practices and policies that promote security.

Abstract

The “governance of security” is defined as the actions designed to shape events in order to create spaces for people to safely work, play, and live. The governance of security has traditionally been thought of as the exclusive domain of State and Federal governments. In this book, however, the authors develop a nodal conception of governance in which multiple government authorities and providers coexist in many ways to produce diverse security outcomes. Chapter 1 develops this notion of nodal government in more depth and argues that ways of imagining and shaping security governance in the business sector and the “third sector” (community groups, non-governmental organizations) influence the thinking of State institutions and vice versa. Chapter 2 promotes a “wave-based” conception of multiple and even overlapping mentalities on security that have emerged over time. The authors explore different waves in police management, focusing on the ideas that have become “imaginable.” Chapter 3 shifts the focus away from State and community security and focuses instead on the security governance of humans, which presents fundamental challenges to traditional understandings of what “security” means and entails. Chapter 4 moves along to an examination of the “governance disparity” between “weak” and “strong” participants in the field of security. The authors argue that as these participants fight for a stronghold in the security field, some emerge as more capable and effective than others. The authors highlight the differences between these strong and weak participants and offer ideas for the ways in which weaker participants can be enabled and developed to more effectively provide security goods. Chapter 5 discusses the various challenges inherent to governing nodal security provision. The authors contend that the potential for nodal governance has not been fully realized due to the dominance of State-centered security provisions and regulations. Note, bibliography, index