Securitizing Systems

Abstract

Securitization is the process by which subjects move from the mundane to “worth securing”. What a group of people consider to be “worth securing” reflects how they understand that subject’s value in relation to their lives. A dominant trend in securitization studies has been the use of speech-act theory to allocate the “source” of security to some specific dominant influence; speech-act securitization is not necessarily coercive, but it privileges the act of declaring security, and only offers that privilege to a handful of actors. This paper instead proposes that declaration is not the dominant aspect of securitization. Rather than stemming from communication, security is a feature of a social system that exists within communication. Securitization is an autopoeitic (in the language of social theorist Niklas Luhmann, whose work this paper draws upon heavily) process that allows society to adapt and respond to threats and change in specific ways.