Consuming Security

http://tcr.sagepub.com/ Theoretical Criminology http://tcr.sagepub.com/content/14/1/3 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/1362480609354533 2010 14: 3Theoretical Criminology Benjamin Goold, Ian Loader and Angelica Thumala Consuming security? : Tools for a sociology of security consumption Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com can be found at:Theoretical CriminologyAdditional services and information for http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts: http://tcr.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions: http://tcr.sagepub.com/content/14/1/3.refs.htmlCitations: at University of British Columbia Library on January 28, 2011tcr.sagepub.comDownloaded from Consuming security? Tools for a sociology of security consumption BENJAMIN GOOLD, IAN LOADER AND ANGELICA THUMALA University of Oxford, UK Abstract How does our understanding of private security alter if we treat security consumption as consumption? In this article, we set out the parameters of a project which strives—theoretically and empirically—to do just this. We begin with a reminder that private security necessarily entails acts of buying and selling, and by indicating how the sociology of consumption may illuminate this central—but overlooked—fact about the phenomenon. We then develop a framework for investigating security consumption. This focuses attention on individual acts of shopping; practices of organizational security that individuals indirectly consume; and social and political arrangements that may prompt the consumption of, or themselves be consumed by, security. This way of seeing, we contend, calls for greater comparative enquiry into the conditions under which markets for security commodities flourish or founder, and close analysis of the social meanings and trajectories of different security goods. By way of illustration we focus on four such categories of good—those we term commonplace, failed, novel and securitized. The overarching claim of the article is that the study of private security currently stands in need of greater conceptual and empirical scrutiny of what is going on when ‘security’ is consumed. Key Words commodification • consumption • markets • objects • security • sociology Theoretical Criminology © The Author(s), 2010 Reprints and Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/ journalsPermissions.nav Vol. 14(1): 3–30; 1362–4806 DOI: 10.1177/1362480609354533 3 at University of British Columbia Library on January 28, 2011tcr.sagepub.comDownloaded from Introduction In recent years, debates about the meaning and significance of security have become one of the central preoccupations of criminology, sociology and political theory. Yet despite the amount of academic interest in security, it remains an under-developed and under-researched concept (Loader and Walker, 2007; Waldron, 2007; Zedner, 2009). Although frequently invoked as a lens through which we can view the ebb and flow of life in late-modern societies, the social processes that shape our alleged preoccupation with security and the specific ways in which this preoccupation manifests itself are rarely examined in any great detail. Instead, much of the debate about security is underpinned by a set of received assumptions about how the private security industry both responds to and shapes security consumption. To date, many criminologists and soci- ologists have taken it for granted that markets for security are akin to those for other types of consumer goods. We assume, for example, that as feelings of insecurity become more acute and demands for security increase, market actors respond in an economically rational fashion, supplying more of the things that people believe will help to alleviate their disquiet. Growth in the private security sector is seen as indicative of a growing sense of insecurity in society, and as both a cause and by-product of the State’s surrender of its monopoly on policing. If there is any elaboration of these basic assumptions about market rationality and the changing role of the State, it is largely to suggest that the security industry plays an active part in stoking the fears that give rise to insecurity—if only to perpetuate and enhance demand for their products—and that the State has been a willing accomplice in this fear mon- gering and the shift towards greater private provision. It is perfectly possible that these assumptions are correct and that the decision to buy a burglar alarm or more locks for one’s door is in essence no different from choosing to buy a television or a new pair of shoes. But the notion that security consumption is like other forms of consumption stands in need of scrutiny. Attaining a better understanding of how security is consumed may help us to gain more insight into the rationale behind the production and marketing of security goods and the factors that influence the demand for security. Greater knowledge of the meanings actors attrib- ute to security goods and the role these goods play in social life may shed light on the extent to which demand for security is driven by producers, how the supposed withdrawal of the State from the provision of security affects the development of the private security market and on why some security products flourish while others fail. This article takes as its starting point the need to develop an empirically grounded, sociological model of security consumption. It focuses explicitly on security consumption as consumption and presents some preliminary findings from an ongoing study into the operation of the private security industry and the market for security products.1 The research is still in progress and we are in no position to arrive at firm conclusions to the above Theoretical Criminology 14(1)4 at University of British Columbia Library on January 28, 2011tcr.sagepub.comDownloaded from questions. But we have become increasingly convinced that markets for security possess social and cultural peculiarities that condition in important ways the trade in security goods and services as a whole, and the success or failure of particular commodities within it. In what follows we sketch the outlines of a model of security consumption that acknowledges the extent to which the purchase of security differs from other forms of mass consump- tion and enables us to grasp theoretically and investigate empirically pre- cisely how and why this difference occurs. The purchase of security There is a voluminous and significant body of literature on private security, encompassing a range of emphases and points of departure. Some of it takes as its starting point the view that private security is bound up with changing forms of governance, neo-liberal political mentalities or atomized and inequitable social relations (Johnston and Shearing, 2003; Ericson, 2006; Singh and Kempa, 2008). Other work supplements this by producing a grounded and empirical understanding of the working practices and effects of commercial security operators (Jones and Newburn, 1998; Rigakos, 2003; Wakefield, 2003). Another strand is designedly practical, comprised of activ- ities—evaluations, how-to-do guides, training courses, conferences, quasi- academic books and journals—which remain close to and strive to be useful for the security industry (Gill, 2006). These different orientations do not, however, disguise the presence of sev- eral recurrent themes. At its heart, this body of work remains concerned with the size, sectoral composition and growth of the commercial security industry, focusing on the functions it performs and how these differ (or not) from those of the public police. It is also deeply interested in the relationship between private security actors and state police organizations and has sought to relate industry growth to the exposure of the State’s limits as a guarantor of security. It has been preoccupied with the effects of private security pro- vision on the unequal access of differently situated individuals to security resources, and examined the role that private security can and might play as part of a multi-institutional ‘security quilt’ (Ericson, 1994). Finally, the liter- ature has scrutinized the background, training and occupational outlooks of those recruited to work as security guards (Button, 2007a), and considered how the individuals and companies who work in the industry are and should be regulated (Zedner, 2006; Button, 2007b; O’Connor et al., 2008). These are important topics and they have generated a rich corpus of crim- inological and sociological writing. Yet the preponderance of this work has, it seems to us, danced around what remains a key feature of the market for private security—namely, that it involves actors who produce, promote and sell goods and services to individuals and organizations who consume them in a bid to secure their person, family, home and neighbourhood, or their business and organizational interests. Much of the literature is, to be sure, Goold et al.—Consuming security? 5 at University of British Columbia Library on January 28, 2011tcr.sagepub.comDownloaded from focused on the effects of that buying and selling. But rarely does it apprehend and analyse private security as a set of market relations or consumption practices, or make the dynamics of those practices the object of enquiry. There are of course exceptions. Spitzer’s (1987) seminal dissection of ‘secu- rity fetishism’ is a notable early example. More recently, one finds analyses of how the public police today charge for certain services and treat citizens as consumers (Clarke et al., 2007; Ayling and Shearing, 2008). One also encounters the recurring claim that the security industry ferments—rather than responds to—demand for its goods and in so doing ‘proves and renews’ what is in fact an insatiable desire for order (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997: 99). The argument that commodified security sets in train a vicious circle that over time erodes support and resources for collective security provision is one that continues to preoccupy a number of writers (see, inter alia, Davis, 1992; Loader, 1999; Zedner, 2003; Bauman, 2006; Ericson, 2006). But such work remains precisely that—an exception.2 It also takes the form of theo- retical claims that invite, but have yet to receive, close empirical attention. Consumption remains, for the most part, the elephant in the room. So what changes if one places this obvious—but we think overlooked— fact about private security at the heart of the investigation? What happens if we treat security consumption as consumption and think about security commodities as if they are like other consumer goods? What happens is this: one’s attention is drawn to the fact that security commodities are designed, manufactured, advertised, promoted and branded by producers who have to create and respond to demands for their goods. One has to fac- tor into one’s enquiries the possibility that such goods may be a source not only of protection, but—like other goods—of pleasure, reassurance and comfort, and that they may like others goods be desired, compared, talked about, shopped for, used, enjoyed, displayed, discarded, traded on e-Bay or replaced and up-graded. One is prompted to ask whether security goods may be subject to fads and fashions, be considered cool or un-cool and have an aesthetics that may seduce or repel consumers. One has to think about whether and how other consumer goods are invested with the power to make one secure and purchased, at least in part, as such. In short, one must analyse the ways in which competing social meanings are attached to the multitude of commodities that are produced, circulated and consumed in a bid to make us safe and secure, and track the trajectories of such goods and their meanings over time and across space. This is the theoretical and empir- ical project that we have embarked upon. To make this move is to venture into a field that analysts of private secu- rity have yet to probe for ideas and resources—namely, the sociology of consumption (Loader, 1999). Work in that field has not been explicitly con- cerned with security products. It does, however, make several substantive claims about consumption that can be extended to the purchase of security goods. This is not the place to attempt a general survey of the sociological work on consumption. But we can highlight three prominent and recurrent themes that may help to illuminate the social meanings and effects of security consumption. Theoretical Criminology 14(1)6 at University of British Columbia Library on January 28, 2011tcr.sagepub.comDownloaded from The first is the claim that consumption is mainly an affair undertaken by individuals who experience it as a realm of autonomy, agency and sovereignty. According to Campbell, ‘a distinctive hallmark of modern consumption is the extent to which goods and services are purchased by individuals for their own use’ (Campbell, 2004: 28). While people create or produce in the company of others, most consumption is done alone and for personal pleasure (Bauman, 1990: 204). In contrast to earlier, collective or social forms of consumption, modern consumerism is characterized by ‘its unrestrained or unrestricted indi- vidualism’ and attaches an extraordinary value to ‘the right of individuals to decide for themselves which goods and services they consume’ (Campbell, 2004: 28). The notion that a consumer culture involves free private consumer choices (Slater, 1997) implies that individuals exercise an ‘active and even sub- versive agency’ and that ‘people’s engagement with commercially produced cul- ture’ is a basis for ‘real autonomy’ (Slater and Tonkiss, 2004: 167). The idea that consumption is undertaken by autonomous agents is evident in the sug- gestion that consumption decisions produce anxiety in individuals who are all too aware of their freedom and responsibility. In the absence of traditional authority and normative frameworks that in previous times would have served as guides for action, contemporary individuals experience their consumer free- dom as a daunting task (Bauman, 1990; Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992; Miller, 1994, 2004; Warde, 1994a). Second, consumption is said to be an imaginative realm, a space of ‘day- dreaming and fantasizing’ (Campbell, 1987: 203) where people are free to form mental projects and anticipate their satisfaction (Hirschman, 1982). Markets have been described as places of ‘diversity’ and ‘play’ and con- sumers’ engagement with its products as a basis for ‘real pleasures’ (Slater and Tonkiss, 2004: 167–8). Emotion and desire are granted a central place in driv- ing consumption (Campbell, 1987; Slater, 1997; Offer, 2006). Shopping, in particular, emerges as an ‘exciting and challenging’ activity, ‘a site of diverse pleasures and freedoms that are connected to but independent of the act of buying or consuming: pleasures of fantasy, desire, looking and feeling, long- ing and so on’ (Wilk, 2004: 20). People articulate ‘views of shopping as utopian, hedonistic, imaginative and liberating’ (Slater and Tonkiss, 2004: 171–2). Shopping is seen as a rewarding activity that compensates for disap- pointments and relieves from stress (Lunt and Livingstone, 1992). Third, consumption is conceptualized as a key marker of social identity and belonging, a means of expressing subjectivity, signalling one’s place within prevailing social hierarchies and reinforcing or unsettling social boundaries. This view of the expressive dimensions of consumption takes various forms. Some postulate that identity is no longer determined clearly by membership of traditional social groupings, such as class, status, gender or religion (Giddens, 1991; Bocock and Thompson, 1992), and that con- sumption is central to the process through which individuals shore up, or even assemble, their identities. In this process, goods are used to demarcate social relationships and emphasize differences in lifestyles and social cate- gories (Douglas and Isherwood, 1979; Featherstone, 1991; Bourdieu, 2002). In the context of a vast supply of approved lifestyles on display in Goold et al.—Consuming security? 7 at University of British Columbia Library on January 28, 2011tcr.sagepub.comDownloaded from the market, individuals use material objects to fashion and re-fashion themselves (Bauman, 1990: 102). The proliferation of choice is, moreover, seen as essential to the discovery of ‘who we are’, as ‘the very activity through which individuals commonly resolve’ the identity predicaments that attend living in the present (Campbell, 2004: 30–1). Other commenta- tors have, however, disputed this ‘individuation approach’ (Featherstone, 1987; Lash and Urry, 1994) by reference to research that shows the endur- ing importance of class, education, income and social background in shap- ing consumption patterns; not only in the cultural field (Di Maggio and Usim, 1978; Peterson and Kern, 1996; Gans, 1999; Kraaykampa and Nieuwbeertab, 2000; Bourdieu, 2002) but also in respect of the consump- tion of household goods, health and sports products and housing (Burrows and Marsh, 1992; Bihagen, 2000; Wilska, 2002; Tomlinson, 2003; Aydin, 2006; Atkinson, 2007). Bourdieu (1984), who has been perhaps the fore- most exponent of this line of enquiry, argues that commodities operate as stakes in contests, not only about social position, but also to maintain the differences between positions. He argues that goods are preferred (or dis- dained) not merely because of their ‘use-value’, but also because they help mark the lines of distinction (that ‘transfigured, misrecognizable, legitimate form of social class’ (1984: 250)) between ‘us’ and ‘them’. For Bourdieu, consumption is intimately embroiled in efforts to express, protect, advance, make and re-make class cohesion and class hierarchies; an act of classifica- tion through which people seek to forge affinities with some groups and place symbolic distance between themselves and others.3 But does the consumption of security goods—alarms, access control sys- tems, CCTV, security guards, gated housing developments, tracking equip- ment and the like—entail all or any of this? Can the sociology of consumption illuminate the meanings and effects of such goods along the lines suggested by this brief foray into the field? The initial findings of our research indi- cate—in ways that we shall shortly describe—that it cannot, at least not by means of any straightforward act of translation. If we are to make sense of private security by thinking about and researching it as consumption, we need to develop theoretical tools that can help us make sociological sense of the specificity of such consumption. In the next section, we turn to this task and sketch the contours of a theoretical framework that simultane- ously calls for and guides a grounded enquiry into what is going on when ‘security’ is consumed. Reframing security consumption The model we have developed comprises three elements that focus on the dynamics of (and interplay between) individual consumption, organiza- tional consumption and the socio-political settings that both shape, and are shaped by, such consumption. These elements are represented in Figure 1. Let us consider each element in turn. Theoretical Criminology 14(1)8 at University of British Columbia Library on January 28, 2011tcr.sagepub.comDownloaded from Individual consumption: shopping for security? As our starting point we take acts of individual consumption and the idea that people shop for security. This idea carries two meanings. The first and most familiar one crops up in the theoretical literature on the commodifica- tion of security. This describes how, und