Abstract
AbstractSecurity shapes everyday life, but despite a growing literature on everyday security there is no consensus on the meaning of the “everyday.” At the same time, the research methods that dominate the field are designed to study elites and high politics. This paper does two things. First, it brings together and synthesizes the existing literature on everyday security to argue that we should think about the everyday life of security as constituted across three dimensions: space, practice, and affect. Thus, the paper adds conceptual clarity, demonstrating that the everyday life of security is multifaceted and exists in mundane spaces, routine practices, and affective/lived experiences. Second, it works through the methodological implications of a three-dimensional understanding of everyday security. In order to capture all three dimensions and the ways in which they interact, we need to explore different methods. The paper offers one such method, exploring the everyday life of security in contemporary China through a participatory photography project with six ordinary citizens in Beijing. The central contribution of the paper is capturing—conceptually and methodologically—all three dimensions, in order to develop our understanding of the everyday life of security.
Highlights
La seguridad da forma a la vida cotidiana; sin embargo, a pesar de la creciente literatura sobre la seguridad cotidiana, no hay consenso sobre el significado de “lo cotidiano.” Al mismo tiempo, los métodos de
International politics shapes everyday life and, at the same time, “the everyday is constitutive of global politics” (Ahäll 2019, 151)
Bringing them together would deepen our understanding of the everyday life of security, but in order to do that we need both conceptual development and methodological advances
Summary
Accessing the everyday is an ongoing methodological challenge. Existing work uses a wide range of methods, from ethnographic methods like observation to interviews and focus groups, but these rarely cut across space, practice, and affect, struggling in particular to capture the embodied and affective aspects of everyday security (see Jarvis 2019, 121). I recruited six participants who each took a series of photographs about security in everyday life (auto-photography), which were discussed in detail during followup interviews (photo-elicitation). Both are part of a group of research methods that have grown out of visual anthropology (Collier 1957; see Collier 1967). It captures “vignettes of social life as it happens,” engaging participants to interpret “their everyday places and practices through the production of images” (Alam, McGregor, and Houston 2018, 2) Used in this way, photography is “closely aligned with lived experience” (Winton 2016) and offers valuable insight into “how ... Visual methods were useful, giving participants the opportunity to portray in their photographs what they themselves considered or experienced as security
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