Routledge Security and Everyday Life (Routledge Advances in Criminology)

When everyday social situations and cultural phenomena come to be associated with a threat to security, security becomes a value which competes with other values – particularly the right to privacy and human rights. In this comparison, security appears as an obvious choice over the loss of some aspects of other values and is seen as a reasonable and worthwhile sacrifice because of what security promises to deliver. When the value of security is elevated to the top of the collective priorities, it becomes a meta-frame, a reference point in relation to which other aspects of social life are articulated and organized. With the tendency to treat a variety of social issues as security threats and the public’s growing acceptance of surveillance as an inevitable form of social control, the security meta-frame rises to the level of a dominant organizing principle in such a way that it shapes the parameters and the conditions of daily living. This volume offers case studies from multiple countries that show how our private and public life is shaped by the security meta-frame and surveillance. It is essential reading for everyone who is interested in the changes to be faced in social life, privacy, and human freedoms during this age of security and surveillance. Review "Vida Bajc and Willen de Lint offer the anthology Security and Everyday Life. Framed as ‘a contribution to our understanding of the dynamics associated with seeing all sorts of everyday social situations and cultural phenomena [as] a potential threat to security’ (p. 1), this anthology is organized around four thematic sections with an introduction by Bajc and a conclusion by de Lint serving as bookends." – Brendan McQuade, Binghamton University, USA "Within its scope, Security and Everyday Life provides a rather insightful view of the situation right now. All in all, I would recommend this volume for researchers not only in the above-mentioned fields of research, but also in leisure, tourism and mobility studies. The multidisciplinary qualities of the publication make it a useful reference in a wide field of enquiry." – Petri Hottola, Annals of Leisure Research “The editors have succeeded in presenting a coherent outlook on security to the reader – something rarely achieved in edited volumes… The strength of the volume is clearly its theoretical cohesiveness and wide scope of ethnographic ‘‘thick descriptions’’... the book is an important and much needed discussion of security as a pervasive concept restructuring everyday lives globally... This volume might help to spark a new discussion about what role security should play in the life of each and every one of us.” – Christian Tagsold, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology About the Author Vida Bajc is completing her doctorate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Willem de Lint is Professor of Criminal Justice at Flinders Law School, Flinders University of South Australia.