Vida Bajc and Willem de Lint (eds.), Security and Everyday Life
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865814554340 |
| Author | Christian Tagsold |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2014, Vol. 47(3) 447–451
!The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865814554340
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Book Reviews
Vida Bajc and Willem de Lint (eds.), Security and Everyday Life, Routledge: New York, 2011; 312 pp.
ISBN 978-0-415-85344-6, $48.95 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Christian Tagsold, Department of Modern Japanese Studies, Heinrich Heine Univer sity,
Dusseldorf, Germany
More and more, security is permeating everyday life. Politicians and security advisors
argue that the world is unsafe and needs to be policed to safeguard society from all sorts
of threats. 9/11 and its aftermath have eased this task, convincing many of lingering
dangers that require expanded policing and surveillance, even at the price of civil liber-
ties. The edited volume, Security and Everyday Life, describes how the security appar-
atus, backed up by bureaucracy, evolves and secures its own existence by identifying ever
new risks and dangers. But the analysis goes beyond this and shows how risk manage-
ment through security has been transformed into an ideology.
In her foreword, Vida Bajc calls this process meta-framing, referring to Gregory
Bateson’s theory. Meta-framing is ‘‘expansive’’ and ‘‘totalizing.’’ The modern nation
state and its mode of governmentality, as pointed out by French philosopher Michel
Foucault, is the driving force for translating the meta-frame of security into social
action. Modern nation states have relied on security as one of their main tools for
governing citizens since their very formation.
Bajc’s concise but dense theoretical introduction sets the background for this volume.
The 10 chapters that follow harmonize quite well in fitting various examples into a
general theoretical framework that builds upon Foucault. It is certainly a strong point
of the volume that the chapters tell a common story though dealing with different aspects
of security. The editors have succeeded in presenting a coherent outlook on security to
the reader – something rarely achieved in edited volumes. However, Bajc’s theory of
meta-framing is somewhat an exception here. Bajc develops an interesting and complex
framework on security as a meta-value in the 21st century which, somewhat unfortu-
nately, is not taken up in the other chapters. Even though it is a shared insight among the
authors of the volume that security is an ideology to be criticized in its current social
implementation and its all-encompassing character, the papers do not take up the notion
of meta-framing explicitly.
Nevertheless, the contributions succeed in explaining the pervasive character of secur-
ity throughout the volume. Salter’s chapter, named for the ‘‘no joking’’ rule at security
checks at airports, is a good example of this. Salter convincingly explains why this rule is
implemented at airports. ‘‘No joking’’ rules were enacted even before 9/11, but have been
applied more severely thereafter. Salter interprets security checks at airports as a con-
fession to, and for the governmental notion of, security by citizens. Humor would foil
this confession and compromise the security check, undermining security, and state
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