ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to present a new anthropological approach to security by explicitly addressing the overlap and entanglement of the practices and discourses of state and non-state security providers, and the associated forms of cooperation and conflict that permit an analysis of these actors’ activities as increasingly “blurred”. It investigates the blurs that arise when ormas provide informal security activities within their communities in Indonesia. The book shows how security providers are capable of setting conditions in terms of indigeneity, ethnicity, religion and locality, and how these elements impact upon the quality of citizenship of those affected. It analyses the entanglements between civilian and state policing and how both policing actors and police practices produce security blurs. The book explores how human agents at times disagree with the decisions of the machine and questions are raised about the qualities of risk assessments.
