Research seminar in Cultural Anthropology with Ruben Andersson

  • Date: –12:00
  • Location: Engelska parken Room 22-1009
  • Lecturer: Ruben Andersson is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oxford and author of Illegality, Inc. (California 2014), No Go World (California 2019), and the forthcoming Wreckonomics (Oxford 2023). He is starting on a three-year Leverhulme major fellowship with the title 'Apocalypse soon: Security, subversion, and the struggle for a human future'.
  • Organiser: The Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
  • Contact person: Chakad Ojani
  • Seminarium

Politics of protection in an age of security.

Security is a watchword for our uncertain times. On the one hand, demand for safety or protection is rising sharply across the left and right of politics in many countries; on the other, the supply of security solutions is escalating from surveillance apparatuses to border walls and biometrics. Instead of genuinely addressing the prevailing sense of insecurity, the supply-side tends to cannibalise the demand-side. The result is a runaway security order with huge implications for our politics and even for our intimate lives. With global trends as the backdrop, I will cast an eye on recent rounds of securitisation in Sweden in particular – ranging from the policing of ‘vulnerable’ neighbourhoods to border controls, NATO accession, and digitalisation– with the aim of starting to open up questions around this ‘age of security’ and how anthropologists (and citizens) may seek to understand it.

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