Ethnographies of Security: Pushing Security Studies Beyond the Bounds of International Relations

Excerpt

Between 2012 and 2014 I lived in Caracas, Venezuela to study the implementation of a national police reform that was led by human rights activists. The reform occurred alongside a number of other initiatives that sought to improve la seguridad ciudadana [citizen security], a term that extends beyond concerns of crime and violence to include all “asocial acts that impede or problematize the normal development and enjoyment of the fundamental rights of persons” (Delgado Aguado and Guàrdia Maduell 1994, 20). This concept of citizen security shifts attention away from national security and public order (Bailey and Dammert 2006) to what we might refer to as an integral or a holistic approach to security (see Rico and Chinchilla 2002), assuming that a multiplicity of interconnected threats exist to human security—physical, emotional, social, and economic, among others.¹ Anthropologist Daniel Goldstein has defined la inseguridad [insecurity], the counterpart to la seguridad, as a “sense that the world is unpredictable, out of control, and inherently dangerous” (Goldstein 2012, 5). Thus, the concept of insecurity becomes accordingly inclusive, making room for all that produces sensations of fear. …