Security in an Age of Anxiety (PO9C7)
Since the end of the Cold War, the expansion of security agendas and the application of security logics to new issues has been widely discussed and analysed. Security is no longer just about the balance of power, narrowly defined conceptions of the national interest, or a focus on strategic issues of war and peace but is increasingly dominated by concerns about migration, climate change, health, development, cyber etc. However, the widening and deepening of security only captures part of current trends. Alongside such processes, it has also become common to hear proclamations of a contemporary ‘age of anxiety’. Popular culture, for instance, is replete with visions of dystopian futures about, inter alia, climate breakdown, technological catastrophe, global pandemics, democratic collapse, and authoritarian futures. Framed differently, insecurity has become an ontological condition characterised by (sometimes species level) anxieties about the future.
This module has three aims. First, to engage with and explore how security has become an increasingly contested and politicised concept. Thus, while the expansion of security is often welcomed, it is always important to consider how security is defined, who the winners and losers are, and therefore whether the expansion of security is necessarily positive. Second, it frames debates about the emergence of new issues on the security agenda in terms of the effects of generalised anxiety on security. It is, in this respect, concerned with how we actually experience (in)security in our everyday lives. Third, the module will therefore familiarise students with a number of concepts and theories that have become increasingly important for thinking about the contemporary security terrain.
Students will be assessed by one 5000 word essay