Trine Villumsen Berling, Ulrik Pram Gad, Karen Lund Petersen and Ole Wæver: Translations of Security

Abstract

This book scrutinizes how contemporary practices of security have come torely on many different translations of security, risk, and danger.Institutions of national security policies are currently undergoing radicalconceptual and organisational changes, and this book presents a novelapproach for how to study and politically address the new situation.Complex and uncertain threat environments, such as terrorism, climatechange, and the global financial crisis, have paved the way for new forms ofsecurity governance that have profoundly transformed the ways in whichthreats are handled today. Crucially, there is a decentralisation of themanagement of security, which is increasingly handled by a broad set ofsocietal actors that previously were not considered powerful in the conductof security a!airs. This transformation of security knowledge andmanagement changes the meaning of traditional concepts and practices,and calls for investigation into the many meanings of security implied whencontemporary societies manage radical dangers, risks, and threats. It isnecessary to study both what these meanings are and how they developedfrom the security practices of the past. Addressing this knowledge gap, thebook asks how di!erent ideas about threats, risk, and dangers meet in thecurrent practices of security, broadly understood, and with what politicalconsequences.This book will be of interest to students of critical security studies,anthropology, risk studies, science and technology studies andInternational Relations.