Tessa Diphoorn

The Emotionality of Participation: Various Modes of Participation in Ethnographic Fieldwork on Private Policing in Durban, South Africa

This article explores methodological issues as a prominent subject in ethnographic fieldwork conducted on a specific group of private security officers, namely, armed response officers, in Durban, South Africa. Through analyzing several experiences from the field, this article highlights the dialectic between emotions and participation in the field and its imperative role in analysis of the research setting. This article explores three different modes of participation, namely, active participation, reluctant participation, and passive participation. As a heuristic device, such a typology allows us as researchers to analyze our position, as participants, in relation to other research participants. This exemplifies the importance of the emotionality of field experiences in researching violence (and the perpetrators of violence).

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.

It's all about the body: the bodily capital of armed response officers in South Africa

In this article, I analyze the role of bodily capital in the daily policing practices of armed response officers, a specific type of private security officers, in Durban, South Africa. Based on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that the masculinized bodily capital of armed response officers is a key source of their sovereign power; it plays a central role in how they acquire and exert authority. Furthermore, I argue that an analysis of bodily capital should not solely analyze the actual flesh of the body, but must include particular equipment (such as bulletproof vests and firearms) that is experienced as a part of the body.

“Surveillance of the Surveillers”: Regulation of the Private Security Industry in South Africa and Kenya

Abstract: The growth of the private security industry on the African continent has resulted in an expanding labor force engaged in surveillance-type activities. This article analyzes various levels of regulation of private security officers as a form of surveillance. Based on qualitative methodology, it compares the numerous regulatory efforts implemented by the state, industry, and companies of the private security industry in Kenya and South Africa and shows that although different, they essentially share the ultimate aim of controlling private security officers, i.e., to implement a means of “surveillance of the surveillers.” Résumé: La croissance de l’industrie de la sécurité privée sur le continent africain a donné lieu à une main-d’œuvre en expansion engagée dans des activités de type de surveillance. Cet article analyse les différents niveaux de réglementation des agents de sécurité privés comme forme de surveillance. Basé sur la méthodologie qualitative, il compare les nombreux efforts de réglementation mis en œuvre par l’État, l’industrie et les entreprises de l’industrie de sécurité privée au Kenya et en Afrique du Sud et montre que, bien que différents, ils partagent tous essentiellement le but ultime de contrôler les agents de sécurité privés, à savoir, de mettre en œuvre un moyen de “surveillance des surveillants.”

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.”