ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the progressive securitization of socioeconomic problems has the effect of depoliticizing what are fundamentally political issues. It examines the ‘commodification’ of security and its reduction to a saleable product traded in the marketplace. The book traces the main trajectories of change in the provision of security, focusing in particular on the re-emergence of private policing, the commodification of public policing, the emergence of new security technologies, such as closed circuit television, and the resultant ‘pluralization’ of security provision. It explores another of the potential burdens of security, namely the threat to civil liberties posed by the war against terror. The book proposes the ‘mass private property’ thesis advanced earlier by Shearing and Stenning, and questions its explanatory force by cautioning that mere historical coincidence between changing property relations and the rise of private security should not be confused with causation.
