Security Atmospheres or the Crystallisation of Worlds

Abstract

This paper makes several moves towards the study of geographies of security through notions of atmosphere. Two related claims circulate through this paper: that security is becoming attuned to what we might call affective atmospheres, whilst it is itself becoming atmospheric. The paper proceeds to develop, first, a correlation of ideas across concepts of security, power, and affective atmospheres. The following section sees security understood atmospherically, before it goes on to explore how security is increasingly attuned to affective atmospheres as its object-target. Finally, by way of conclusion, the paper offers several manners of contestation and critique. Throughout, the paper draws on a variety of secondary literature as well as primary documentary research and analysis, focusing empirically upon a set of counterinsurgency practices known as ‘atmospherics’.