ABSTRACT
In order to explain how the concept of security came to influence so many fields let us trace the genealogy of its modern usage. This genealogy is not just a matter of academic interest, for whereas many concepts change beyond recognition over time, the historical meanings of security are not so much sequential as cumulative. Over the course of the last several hundred years, security has acquired layers of meaning that have lost little of their relevance today – with the result that the writings of Hobbes, Locke, Smith, Bentham, and Mill speak to us as clearly now as when they were written. Charting the shifting interpretations and changing applications of security historically is essential therefore to understanding the multiple strata of ideas still embedded in this single term.
