Erella Grassiani

Securitizing capital: A processual-relational approach to pluralized security

In this article, we introduce the concept of ‘securitizing capital’ as a new analytical tool to understand the pluralized landscape of security. We define securitizing capital as a process whereby different forms of capital are, consciously and unconsciously, used to acquire legitimacy and power. While other approaches have been developed to understand pluralized security, such as security networks, nodal frameworks and assemblages, we argue that, useful as they are, they tend to overlook issues of agency, how relationships are established and negotiated and the subjective experiences of security. In contrast, we introduce a processual-relational approach that is based on the translation and conversion of other types of capital, such as economic and social, to acquire a position of power within a specific (security) ‘field’. In order to elaborate on our approach and its relevance, we draw on fieldwork conducted in Kenya, Jamaica and Israel.

Between security and military identities: The case of Israeli security experts

The relationship between private security professionals and the military in Israel is complex. While there is growing attention to the fact that security and military actors and their activities are becoming increasingly blurred, the Israeli case shows something different. In this ground-up analysis of the relationship between private security practices and the military, I investigate its constant negotiation by private security professionals through their identification with and differentiation from the military, whereby they reconfigure the meaning of military capital. This identity work should be understood, I propose, within the strongly militarist context of Israeli society, where military capital is highly valued. I argue that actors who exit the military system feel the need to demonstrate the added value of their work in the private sector in order for it to gain value in the light of the symbolic capital given to the military. I analyse these processes as leading to a new kind of militarism, which includes security skills and ideas about professionalism. Such an approach sheds new light on the ways in which security actors can actively reconfigure the workings of military capital in and outside the nation-state and produce a different kind of militarism.

Introduction: Anxiety at the Top

At first sight, it might appear surprising that elites and other privileged groups are anxious about too much public attention. Their suspicion of, for example, media exposure and their efforts to shield much of their lives – professional and private – from the outside world is telling, however.1 This tendency to control media exposure and to avoid speaking to journalists, researchers and other non-insiders seems to contradict our notion of powerful and privileged groups as being full of confidence and conviction. Why would they be concerned about “unwanted” exposure? We believe they bother because they are aware of the limits of their power, i.e. they are aware that too much exposure of their position may evoke opposition, which potentially jeopardizes their privileges.2 John Scott (2008: 38) argues that “[o]ne of the errors made in much elite analysis . . . has been to assume, or at the very least to imply, that elites are allpowerful and that organizationally dominant groups will hold all the other power resources of a society.” Public relations and press officers increasingly controlling media relationships of private and public institutions of power such as banks and governments, as well as elites withdrawing into gated communities, appear to confirm Scott’s analysis that elites are as a matter of fact less powerful than we might believe. They try to manage potential resentment, as they appear aware that they will have difficulties in controlling an outbreak of popular disapproval. As Lisa Douglass (1992: 37) argues, “[p]eople

Commercialised occupation skills

ISRAELI SECURITY PERSONNEL, technology, and ideas are immensely popular in places around the world that are perceived or marked as insecure. The fact that an idea, strategy, person, or technology comes from this small country in the Middle East seems to be enough for people and states to blindly believe its effectiveness. At the heart of this conviction is the Israeli experience in conflict, urban warfare, and dealing with terrorism. As an American journalist wrote: ‘everybody’s favourite soldier of fortune is an Israeli with military experience’ (Johnson 2010: n.p.). To illustrate this phenomenon, I will start with an example. A security company owned by an Israeli in the United States (US) was asked to set up security checkpoints in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. The location where they performed this task was Audubon Place, which is a private, rich enclave. When hurricane Katrina hit, the inhabitants were afraid that criminals roaming the city’s streets would rob their homes and they decided to hire this private security company (PSC) the operatives of which (Israeli ex-combatants) were helicoptered into Audubon Place by the American private military firm Blackwater, dressed in bulletproof vests and carrying M-16 automatic rifles. Interestingly, the inhabitants had specifically asked for Israeli security personnel. The operatives manned the gates of the enclave and made sure that no one entered. When interviewed by a journalist the Israeli ex-combatants said they had ‘been fighting the Palestinians all day, every day, our whole lives’, emphasising that the mere look of their gun would scare away criminals, making this job a piece of cake in comparison (Scahill 2005: n.p.). The Israeli founder of the company furthermore stated that ‘[his] people were highly trained to operate in hostile environments. That fit well with the demand of the situation in New Orleans’ (Hutchinson and Masson 2007: n.p.), clearly making reference to their background in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

Introduction : Ethnographies of Private Security

This introduction emphasizes the value of an anthropological lens within the research on private security. Although much scholarly work has been conducted on private security throughout the past decades, anthropological attention for this subject was somewhat delayed. Yet, the works that have emerged from this discipline through ethnographic fieldwork have provided new and different types of insights, namely bottom-up understandings that explore the daily practices and performances of security and the experiences of the security actors themselves, that other disciplines can unquestionably draw from. As the introductory piece of this section, it also familiarizes the four articles that constitute various “ethnographies of private security.”