Securitization in a safe new world

Abstract

This chapter discusses how security has taken conceptual control of the moral space and has thus taken on an ordering quality. Recent decades have seen a gradual securitization that has merged into a greater technological development of digitalization and data analysis. The secularization process initially contributed to the increase in crimes in the 1970s, but this was stopped in the 1990s because of all kinds of preventative security arrangements. But it also contributed to the fear of crime, through the loss of certainty which coherent philosophies of life can offer. The experience of feeling unsafe was a crucial factor in security politics. More and more pragmatic instruments were deployed to prevent crime and to counter the fear of crime. Security became a societal project, in which everyone got involved. However, security is a concept without a final stage — it is difficult to define in a positive way: what is really safe? For that reason, it even gets metaphysical connotations: an infinite desire for safety and certainty.