Securosociality: Reconceptualizing the Social Lives of Security

This article introduces the concept of securosociality by drawing on my research on non-state security in South Africa. By examining ethnographic examples of how actors establish security-related social ties with each other and the role of vernacular understandings of security in forging them, I argue that this concept is a productive lens for analyzing the social lives of security. Among other things, its focus on the dynamic and versatile nature of social life allows justice to be done to the observation that one and the same actor can be involved in different security-related social arrangements and to highlight the existence of securosocialities that bridge otherwise prevailing social divisions and cleavages.