ABSTRACT
To approach energy security as a security practice, this chapter unpacks the concept, logics and practices of security with the help of the critical security literature. It defines security broadly as the mode through which people identify undesirable futures and act upon them in the present. The first part of this chapter describes what security is and identifies several types of insecurity, different techniques to identify undesired futures, and multiple security logics that help us act on such futures in the present. The latter part of the chapter discusses how security works. It finds a mode of reasoning that (1) is highly normative, as there are always things and persons excluded from that what is to be secured. This mode of reasoning (2) is productive and not just conservative as it helps create the values it is trying to secure. It is a mode of reasoning that (3) is called upon in political arenas to provide a level of urgency to its referent object. And it is a mode of reasoning that (4) through risk assessment and insurance practices structures large part of our daily lives.
