Security! What Do You Mean?: From Concept to Thick Signifier

Abstract

This article starts from the following observation. Although the debate on expanding the security agenda to non-military sectors and non-state referent objects launched an interesting discussion about the security (studies) agenda, it has not really dealt with the meaning of security. It has concentrated on adding adjectives such as `societal', `environmental', `world', etc. to security but has largely neglected the meaning — or, more technically, the signifying work — of the noun `security' itself. This article wants to draw attention to the question of the meaning of security. First, it differentiates three ways of dealing with the meaning of the noun — a definition, a conceptual analysis and a thick signifier approach, which focuses on the wider order of meaning which `security' articulates. Two things are claimed — (a) an increasing degree of sophistication if one moves from the first to the third approach; and (b) a qualitative change in the security studies agenda if one uses a thick signifier approach. The second part of the article illustrates how this thick signifier approach contributes to a better and also different understanding of security. Here, the main argument is that security mediates the relation between life and death and that this articulates a double security problematic — a daily security and an ontological security problematic.