Governing Terrorism Through Risk: Taking Precautions, (un)Knowing the Future (original) (raw)

Insuring Terrorism, Assuring Subjects, Ensuring Normality: The Politics of Risk after 9/11

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 2008

Security has been located either in the political spectacle of public discourses or within the specialised field of security professionals, experts in the management of unease. This article takes issue with these analyses and argues that security practices are also formulated in more heterogeneous locations. Through a governmental analysis of risk, this article locates security practices in the 'shadows' of the insurance industry. Since the early days of the 'war on terror', the insurance industry has had an instrumental role and 'underwriting terrorism' has become part of the global governmentality of terrorism. We explore the political implications of the classificatory practices that insurance presupposes and argue that the technologies of insurance foster subjects who are consistent with the logic of capitalism and entrench a vision of the social where antagonisms have been displaced or are suspended by an overwhelming concern with the continuity of social and economic processes. These effects of insurance will be discussed as the 'temporality', 'subjectivity' and 'alterity' effects.

Criminology and Terrorism: Which Thesis? Risk Society or Governmentality?

British Journal of Criminology, 2006

, terrorism has been the subject of intense media interest, political dialogue and public scrutiny. Through well publicized discussions about its constitution and consequences, the 'new terrorism' has been open to heavy institutional construction. Yet, criminological incursion into the debate about 'new terrorism' has so far been relatively limited. This article seeks to directly address this lacuna by employing two distinct theoretical perspectives on risk and demonstrating how each can aid our understanding of the manufacture of the terrorist threat. The risk-society thesis proposed by Beck is employed to examine the novel features of 'new terrorism', including the deployment of hi-tech weaponry, the reproduction of catastrophic effects and the changing geography of danger. Through the Foucauldian looking glass of governmentality, we inspect the means through which risk is rendered thinkable, the discursive construction of terrorism and the intensification of a wider culture of surveillance and control. Our application is governed by two key objectives. First, we wish to critique the ways in which the terrorist threat is being discursively and materially shaped by law and order institutions. Secondly, we wish to explore the possibility of setting a criminological agenda that is both inclusive of and responsive to current concerns about the management of 'new terrorism'.

'Trust Us and Be Scared: The Changing Nature of Contemporary Risk' (2007)

Global Society, 2007

The contemporary Western preoccupation with risk assessment is profound. However, this does not mean that the concept of risk is a useful theoretical tool for understanding contemporary society in general. The talk of a risk society is part of a tendency to take risk as an all-embracing category with little attention paid either to the distinction between abstract risk and risk assessment, or to different formations of risk in time and place. We argue that a fundamental shift in the communication of risk has also emerged, particularly in the context of the war on terror. Most of the classical risk com-munication literature is concerned with persuading people that the authorities or com-panies have the expertise to take care of some problem: “there is a risk”, it says, “we can never manage it completely, but be reassured that we are taking care of it on your behalf”. With the emergence of the war on terror, a number of changes have occurred. Govern-ments in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere stress the novelty and radical emergence of terrorism-as-risk, in part by ignoring history and con-centrating on the symptoms to maintain a continuing sense of danger. Second, the prior emphasis on experts and expert systems for generating risk assessment is being actively undermined by ideologues. These changes represent a disturbing shift from the dominance of the Enlightenment idea of trusting in science and knowledge to accepting a post-Enlightenment idea that authority and ideology are all that can ever underpin the assessment of abstract risk, particularly in the case of terrorism.

Can we fight terrorism pre‐emptively

How profiling and mass surveillance affect our society "Britain must decide whether to take on the "evil" of Isis in its Syrian heartlands or wait for them to attack us."

Risk, dread and the crisis of counter-terrorism security

Rosa dos Ventos, 2013

The present research explores not only the diverse definitions of terrorism but also the social conditions for the appearance of counter-terrorism. 9/11 was undoubtedly the epicenter of a new way of interpreting the risksociety. Combining empirical examples with a rich conceptual framework, our thesis is that while complete, no-gaps security may prove elusive, counterterrorism security can (and should) make people feel good about moving through public places. Last but not least, the 'representational' practices of security have become a central concern for counterterrorism thinkers in the post-9/11 world. Indeed, these authors have described these representations of security in only slightly different ways. These security methods and styles share much in common. Given the right situation, it might be argued that these authors are all describing something similar, if not the same thing. These methods are designed to mitigate fear and foster feelings of safety, certainty and security in inexpensive ways. We will conclude with two post-9/11 stories that illustrate this argument. The first story is drawn from an interview conducted with an Australian school teacher who worked for a year in a small town in Virginia. During her one year teaching assignment in 2006 and 2007 she was struck by the paradox of the everyday lives of the children she taught in this town. She marveled at their wonderful play equipment, sporting equipment and their pristine suburbs. She also marveled at how this play equipment and sporting facilities were never used.

Counterterrorism as Risk Management Strategies

2012

Contents xiii 3.2.2 Reflections on the risk management and risk governance framework 3.2.3 Different rationales for thinking about risks 3.3 Approaching the field of Discourse Analysis 3.3.1 The power of discourses 3.3.2 Storylines and discourse coalitions 3.3.3 Discourse institutionalization 3.4 Theoretical implications 4 Methodological approach 4.1 Approaching the field of terrorism risk discourses 4.2 Data collection 4.3 Data analysis 4.4 Research quality 5 Results 5.1 Results from the articles 5.2 The overall study of terrorism risk discourses 5.3 How has the terrorism risk phenomenon been understood and conceptualized in the Norwegian context? 5.3.1 The overall trends in the framing of terrorism risk 5.3.2 The discourse coalitions 5.4 Have the changes in the terrorism risk discourses contributed to legitimizing implementations of counterterrorism measures? 5.4.1 Institutionalization of the overall framing of terrorism risk 5.4.2 Institutionalization of the discourse coalitions 5.5 What have been the arguments behind the implementations of counterterrorism measures in Norway? 5.6 What role does riskͲbased thinking play in the public terrorism risk discourses? 6 Discussion 6.1 The power to define terrorism risk Contents xiv 6.2 Is the omnipresent societal threat set of storylines a reflection of changes in the terrorism threat? 6.3 Norwegian terrorism risk discourses in context 6.4 Reflections on riskͲbased thinking and terrorism 6.5 The trajectory of the Norwegian terrorism risk discourses 6.6 Reflections on the Argumentative Discourse Analysis 6.7 Reflections on the assumptions of this study 7 Conclusions 7.1 Overall conclusions of the studies performed 7.2 Future research needs