What Is a PARIS Approach to (In)securitization? Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology | Didier Bigo, Emma McCluskey | ResearchPod

Transcript: What Is a PARIS Approach to (In)securitization? Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology

[[RP_SECTION:the-paris-approach|The PARIS approach]]

Alex: [measured, professional] A security agency, on this view, is not standing outside a problem and responding to it. It helps draw the line between what counts as secure and what counts as a risk. That is the position of the PARIS approach, as Didier Bigo and Emma McCluskey set it out in their conceptual account.

Sam: [curious, analytical] That sounds like a strong causal thesis. Does labeling something a threat inherently generate the insecurity it claims to address? Or is it weaker, that the label is part of how the line between secure and insecure gets drawn?

Alex: [precise] The weaker reading is the safer one. The anchor is an image: security and insecurity sit on a single continuous surface, like a Möbius strip. You can't follow it from one side to the other and find a clean edge. PARIS stands for Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology, and its point is about that boundary-making. Agencies help construct the boundaries, they don't just react to external danger.

Sam: [leaning in, probing] So the agency is an active participant in defining the reality it manages. Where does that leave the usual map of the field? Security studies is often taught as three schools: Aberystwyth, Copenhagen, and Paris. [[RP_SECTION:critique-of-security-schools|Critique of security schools]]

Alex: [steady, grounded] The authors push against the essentialism of that three-schools model. The city labels work as shorthand, but they obscure the fact that these scholars have been in a productive, evolving dialogue for decades. Treating them as fixed, rival camps misdescribes how the work developed.

Sam: [thoughtful, processing] As a sociologist of knowledge would put it, the taxonomy is itself a construction. The labels are products of practice, and the field is doing to itself what it says security agencies do to threats.

Alex: [deliberate, clarifying] That's a fair extension, and it fits the method. If you stop treating the schools as natural kinds, you look at the everyday practices that produce the labels. The same move applies to security itself. The approach rejects the functionalist view in which security is just a response to danger. Instead it analyzes the habitus of professionals of politics and of security agencies: the dispositions and routines that shape how they see and act.

Sam: [skeptical, pushing back] Here's where I'd expect a referee to push. If you focus on mundane practices, you risk losing the broader political stakes. How do you connect a micro-level analysis of routines to macro-level questions about state power and civil liberties? [[RP_SECTION:micro-level-security-practices|Micro-level security practices]]

What Is a PARIS Approach to (In)securitization? Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology

Didier Bigo, Emma McCluskey

Apr 5, 2018·5:12·user_upload·Original Paper

PARIS approach(In)securitizationMobius strip metaphorPolitical anthropologyCritical Security Studies (CSS)Securitization

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Briefing

The PARIS Approach to (In)securitization

Didier Bigo and Emma McCluskey propose the PARIS approach—Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology—as a critical alternative to traditional security studies. The authors argue that the common practice of categorizing critical security research into rival 'schools' (such as Aberystwyth, Copenhagen, and Paris) is an essentialist mistake that obscures the actual intellectual convergence and dialogue occurring among scholars. Instead of treating these as competing geographic entities, the authors define PARIS as a research program that integrates political anthropology, sociology, and international relations to examine how security is constructed in practice.

Moving Beyond Essentialism

The core of the PARIS approach is the rejection of the idea that 'security' is a stable, objective concept or a fixed object of study. Instead, the authors argue that security is a label used by various actors—practitioners, think-tanks, and academics—to justify specific political actions, often involving coercion or surveillance. By analyzing the 'social life' of these labels, the PARIS approach seeks to uncover the symbolic violence inherent in how boundaries are drawn between security and insecurity, or between freedom and threat.

The Mobius Strip of (In)security

Perhaps the most significant conceptual contribution is the metaphor of the Mobius strip. The authors argue that security and insecurity are not two separate, opposing sides of a coin. Rather, they form a single, continuous surface where the distinction between the two is constantly contested and shifting. Because there is no objective 'inside' or 'outside' to this strip, the researchers emphasize that any attempt to define security is inherently a political act of power.

Why It Matters

This approach is vital for researchers because it demands a shift in focus: from asking 'what is security?' to 'what does security do?' By studying the everyday practices of actors across different fields—from policing and border control to digital surveillance—the PARIS approach reveals how security discourses can diminish democratic debate and silence discussions on freedom and equality. It encourages scholars to move away from the 'publish or perish' culture of simplifying complex social phenomena, urging them instead to embrace the messy, transdisciplinary reality of how power is exercised in the name of security.

Key Terms and Definitions

(In)securitization — A process where the boundaries between security and insecurity are constantly negotiated and constructed through social practices rather than being fixed, objective conditions.
Mobius Strip — A metaphor used to describe the relationship between security and insecurity, illustrating that they are not two distinct, opposing sides but a single, continuous surface where the distinction is always subject to political contestation.
Practical Sense — A Bourdieusian concept referring to the intuitive, taken-for-granted logic that guides the actions of individuals within a specific social field, often without explicit conscious reflection.
Symbolic Power — The capacity to impose a specific vision of the world, such as defining what constitutes a 'threat' or 'security,' which is accepted as legitimate by others within a field.
Doxa — The set of fundamental, unquestioned beliefs and assumptions that define the 'common sense' of a particular field, often masking the arbitrary nature of power relations.

Abstract

Abstract This chapter sets out the burgeoning research program taking place as part of a “PARIS” approach to studying processes of (in)security and (in)securitization. PARIS is an acronym for Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology. The chapter outlines how a PARIS approach highlights the study of how different bodies of knowledge are labeling security, examining the tensions and controversies between and within practitioners and disciplinary fields in these labeling practices. It analyses different intellectual ways to study the relationship between the “security” label and the boundaries of “security” practices alternatively labeled by others freedom, mobility, violence, or privacy. The chapter concludes by conceptualizing the relation between security and insecurity as a mobius strip; a metaphor which demonstrates how one can never be certain what constitutes the content of security and not insecurity. A PARIS approach thus calls for the study of everyday (in)securitization processes and practices.

What Is a PARIS Approach to (In)securitization? Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology: Research Paper Podcast