ABSTRACT
This chapter is an introduction to the theme of unequal security and an overview of some of the central themes of this edited volume. We first argue that the notion of equal security is tightly connected to the modern nation-state project. We then trace how it has moved far beyond the provision of physical security over time and extends over a broad range of protective policies. Security is, however, also a difficult and multidimensional analytical concept. Inspired by the international relations and anthropological literature on the topic, we conceptualize security for the study of (mostly domestic) policies as a ‘political affect’ with five core dimensions (danger dimension, issue dimension, reference and distributional dimension, spatial dimension and evidential dimension). We close with an outlook on the chapters of this book.
