Three Energy Streams of Security Culture – A Theoretical Research Model in Security Sciences

Security sciences (author’s equivalent for the Polish term nauki o bezpieczeństwie) – is a separate discipline belonging to the field of social sciences in the Polish classification of the fields of science and technology (largely basing on OECD classification). Security sciences only partially overlap with its ‘elder sister’ subdiscipline of political science – security studies. The word sciences in the name security sciences refers to social sciences approached in a systemic way, rather than to natural sciences as it often does. Much as security sciences belong to the scientific sphere of social sciences, they mainly concentrate on the problematics of security, in the context of the pursuit of the state of freedom from threats by a human being, as well as social groups and organisations that they establish. It should be emphasized that security sciences are equipped with a very precise and rigorous methodological framework, owing to which it has become possible to grant them in 2011 the status of a separate discipline within the Polish classification of sciences. Another distinguishing feature of security sciences is the fact that their focus is not only on the state-centric approach to national security and international security as it is in security studies, developed in English-speaking academia shortly after World War I to provide the theoretical framework for the prevention of new risks to international security. Security sciences predominantly focus on the individual and community-related aspects of security, as well as on the systemic approach to such aspects of security as internal security, homeland security, public security, or common security. Despite the general separateness of security sciences and security studies, they share vital common elements. First and foremost, both approaches concentrate on the security of a human being, and the human is their main focus. The second and the third shared elements are two research frameworks used in both approaches: the framework postulated by the Copenhagen school of security studies, and the theoretical model by the name of security culture (probably the most transdisciplinary and versatile concept within security research); both explained in the following article.

Issues concerning noticing differences between interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity – see in: Piwowarski [49].

The present article refers in its content, but also provides an extension, to the following work: Piwowarski [47].

Latin modus vivendi secundum virtutem (cf. [45]: 3).

Special consciousness – the author uses this term to refer to a form of the so-called relational consciousness, a category created by the British psychologist David Hay (1935–2014); Hay developed the evolutionary views of Alister Hardy; relational consciousness is an innate psychic trait that allows humans to experience spiritual states; it is marked in development, before the child can be socialized; Hay recognized four types of relational consciousness: (1) a child in relation to consciousness of the Absolute, (2) a child in relation to the consciousness of others, (3) a child in relation to the consciousness of the surrounding reality, (4) a child in relation to the self-consciousness. Relational awareness can be interpreted as an instruction to reduce the distance between the psyche of the self of the subject of security and various aspects of reality. See: Hay and Nye [23].

Marcus Tullius Cicero lived in the years 106–43 BC in Rome and was an excellent orator, philosopher, writer, statesman; the career of a court attorney led Cicero to high offices, such as a senator and a Roman consul; see: Everitt [18]; Kumaniecki [37].

In Oxford English Dictionary, 1510 is given as the date when the term culture first appears in the English language.

In the seventeenth century, the term culture appeared in the works of Samuel Pufendorf, such as De jure naturae et gentium libri octo published in 1672, in such terms as agricultura, cultura morum reliquis and, above all, cultura animi; it can be assumed that Pufendorf used the term cultura to describe all human creations: from social institutions, everyday objects, to language, human morality and customs.

In his collection of essays, Culture and Anarchy (1869) Matthew Arnold criticized the Victorian society; he divided it into barbarians (aristocrats), philistines (bourgeoisie) and the mob and proclaimed the crisis of society accompanied with threats to human security, originating in rendering social relationships dependent on money and luxury.

Action – it is a kind of human behavior with which subjects that are the authors of actions associate a certain meaning (sense of meaning); it was Max Weber who proclaimed the category of action; these days a basic concept of sociology: “Action means human behavior (…) if and on condition that the actor, or many actors, links it to a certain subjective sense” ([63]: 6).

Compare Culture [entry], [in:] The Concise PWN Encyclopaedia [56].

The concept of generation in the definition by Ossowska [44] is considered in a similar way.

Author’s own translation.

“Security sectors were another concept of the Copenhagen school. (…), [which enable] the analysis of variables” ([39]: 17).