Security in the age of networks

Abstract

Using the literature on the networked society as a starting point, this article argues that security can also be conceptualized as being produced by various networks of actors—public and private. This approach eschews the usual debate between those who defend the pre‐eminence of the state (general interest) and those in favour of a plural mode of security production (market‐oriented) to focus instead on the shared complex morphology that characterizes security assemblages in the present era: networks. Security networks are found in both Anglo‐Saxon and Continental societies at the local, institutional, international and informational levels. In order to overcome the descriptive tendency of network approaches, a dynamic framework based on the capital metaphor shows how each actor of a security network mobilizes distinct forms of resources in order to maximize its position in the network. This framework can be applied to chart the emergence and transformation of security networks and the strategies deployed by their nodes.

Keywords:

• Security networks
• Governance of security
• Local security networks
• Institutional security networks
• International security networks
• Informational security networks
• Social
• cultural
• political
• economic and symbolic capitals

Notes

Correspondence to: Benoît Dupont, Assistant Professor, School of Criminology, University of Montreal, CP 6128 Succursale Centre‐Ville, Montreal QC H3C 3J7, Canada. E‐mail: [email protected]. The author is grateful to J.‐P. Brodeur, M. Cusson, P. Grabosky, C. Morselli and J. Ratcliffe for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

It is however surprising that no one thus far has risked an analogy with the galleys, where prisoners chained to their bench rowed in cadence, determined by the speed and the direction the captain needed to achieve, with those too exhausted to follow the beat being flogged in the hope that this would boost their stamina. The new “steering and rowing” imagery appears to involve a more consensual form of collaboration.

For a detailed discussion of “the rhetoric and reality of public‐private partnerships”, see Wettenhall (2003).

For a valuable discussion of the limits of the term “policing” as a semantic tool to explore issues related to social order and security, mainly because of its systematic association with the idea of public police institutions, see Johnston and Shearing (2003: 10).

According to the United Nations Population Division, an urban agglomeration qualifies as a mega‐city when it reaches ten million persons. In 1950, there was only one: New York. By 1975, there were five of them, 16 in 2000, and projections estimate that there will be 21 such metropolises by 2015 (United Nations Population Division, 2002: 93).

This programme provides American peace monitors under United Nations supervision in places such as Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor.

Such companies include ACIL and Overseas Project Corporation of Victoria in Australia.

Known as “Amber alerts”, this system relies on thousands of voluntary users who download a screensaver onto their computer. When a child is abducted, the police uses the screensaver to broadcast details of the child and abductor. E‐mail, news tickers and other media alerts are also sent out to people living in the area of the abduction (see www.codeamber.org ).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Benoît Dupont

Correspondence to: Benoît Dupont, Assistant Professor, School of Criminology, University of Montreal, CP 6128 Succursale Centre‐Ville, Montreal QC H3C 3J7, Canada. E‐mail: [email protected]. The author is grateful to J.‐P. Brodeur, M. Cusson, P. Grabosky, C. Morselli and J. Ratcliffe for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.