Global Security Assemblages: Enhancing Assemblage Thinking with Bourdieu’s Sociology

Abstract

This chapter offers a concise overview of intellectual origins and major insights from the various strands of assemblage thinking, which has recently become rather popular among scholars attempting to conceptualize both the natural and social worlds in a period of rapid social change. This is followed by the discussion of one specific strand of assemblage thinking, the global security assemblages, that represents the main intellectual inspiration for the analysis of the practices of PSCs in the Czech Republic, presented in the subsequent chapters in this book. Its key advantage over the other strands of assemblage thinking lies in its unique suitability for analysis of complex power struggles within assemblages, which stems from the incorporation of several key concepts from Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological field theory (capital, field, doxa, meta-capital, and habitus) in order to comprehend the constantly evolving reassembly of security governance in a particular time and location. The final section of this chapter highlights several additional epistemological and methodological insights derived from the alternative strands of assemblage thinking that have also been useful for analyzing the practices of the Czech PSCs and their impact on the relations and positions of public and private actors in the fields of security and politics.