The security field: Forming and expanding a Bourdieusian criminology

Published date01 April 2021
DOI10.1177/1748895819839734
AuthorMatt Bowden
Date01 April 2021
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895819839734
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2021, Vol. 21(2) 169 –186
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895819839734
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The security field:
Forming and expanding a
Bourdieusian criminology
Matt Bowden
Technological University Dublin, Ireland
Abstract
Recent scholarly contributions have sought to integrate Bourdieusian sociology with criminology,
centring for example, on the ‘street’ field as a symbolic and narrative space occupied by players
within criminal justice. This article complements this broad objective by focusing on the changes
in contemporary police and security governance that are pointing towards an emerging security
field. Such a change can be read from the literature on plural policing and crime control, and
involves the morphology of policing into nodes or assemblages of security producers. While
there has been some attention to the formation of security networks, further empirical work is
required to map the field dynamics using a Bourdieusian toolkit. This article explores the concept
of the security field, presents some observations from current field research and identifies some
remaining questions and challenges for further conceptualization and empirical research.
Keywords
field theory, Pierre Bourdieu, plural policing, security field, security governance
Introduction
There is a growing wave of scholarship using Bourdieu’s conceptual toolkit in criminol-
ogy in studies of ‘street habitus’ as a survival craft (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2009); on
processes of incorporation and resistance as ‘street social capital’ (Ilan, 2013); and more
recently still this potential Bourdieusian turn has seen the conjoining of narrative as ‘street
talk’ which binds elements of the ‘street field’ where both practice and structure take
place (Sandberg and Fleetwood, 2016). A significant contribution, developing the concept
and outlining the parameters of the street field has also been presented by Shammas and
Sandberg (2016). This latter contribution is especially significant for conceptualizing the
Corresponding author:
Matt Bowden, School of Languages, Law and Social Sciences, Technological University Dublin, City Campus,
Grangegorman, Dublin, D07 H6K8, Ireland.
Email: Matt.bowden@dit.ie
839734CRJ0010.1177/1748895819839734Criminology & Criminal JusticeBowden
research-article2019
Article
170 Criminology & Criminal Justice 21(2)
‘street’ as a heuristic for analysing the power dynamics between the dominant juridical
field and the space occupied by offenders and criminal justice actors. One route to
strengthening such a frame is to consider the practices in non-juridical institutions, civil
and private actors, together with ongoing transformations in policing. This would mean
grasping the issues that have long since been raised about the transformation of police
from the bureaucratic organization to security governance as a contemporary process.
This article aims to widen and deepen the utilization of Bourdieusian sociology within
criminological theory and research by integrating Bourdieu’s concepts with the signifi-
cant literatures on the related issues of plural policing, crime control, urban security,
crime prevention and security networks that have risen to prominence within the frame
of security governance. The argument is formed from the idea that the security field is
the result in changes in the police field – a central institution of modernity which is itself
morphing into a variety of specialized control institutions, shifting the nature of hierar-
chical organization of security to one that is captured primarily in a ‘nodal’ or networked
model (Loader and Walker, 2007; Schuilenburg, 2015; Wood and Shearing, 2007). At
this juncture, both Bourdieusian theory and analytic method have merit for applying
fresh thinking tools to this emerging field, as it potentially allows us to map the constel-
lation of new players and gain a more critical standpoint from which to view their strate-
gies for position.
The application of sociological theory to security is as yet an underdeveloped and
decidedly untidy business. While there has been a growing literature within criminology
drawing from Bourdieu’s theory and methodology, there has been little account yet of the
formation of security production which is forming as a major capital interest in these
times (Rigakos, 2016). The field conceptualization of security has however, gained some
traction recently in the work of Diphoorn and Grassiani (2016) who put forward a pro-
cessual-relational model for the way in which different forms of capital are used to
strategize to gain field position. Adding to these efforts, this article seeks to explore the
‘field’ conceptualization of security, and in the process, to write Bourdieu further into
criminology. After a brief sketch of Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital and habitus, the
article outlines and critically discusses some uses of the field concept in criminology
focusing on two key areas: the police field; and the street field. The article then considers
the case for thinking about a security field, drawing from realist critiques and cases
showing crime control to be highly nuanced and ‘geo-historic’. The growth of plural
policing is then considered and some of the implications for a field conceptualization and
analysis of security governance are outlined. Some early observations are set out from
ongoing field research that shed light on the security field in one national context.
Field Theory and Criminology: Writing Bourdieu In
Bourdieu’s concept of field is both a theoretical device and an analytical method and is
best understood as the competitive arenas in which actors with distinct types of capital
compete to achieve position. Capital includes economic capital which has to do with
flows of wealth, profits and finance; cultural capital which stems from particular forms
of knowledge, credentials and information; and social capital which accrues from net-
working and group membership. Society is conceived in this way as being structured by

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