Description
Book SynopsisEveryday security threats draws on ideas from international security studies and political psychology to explore citizens' perceptions and experiences of security threats in contemporary Britain.
Using data from twenty focus groups across six British cities and a large sample survey conducted between April and September 2012, Daniel Stevens and Nick Vaughan-Williams investigate the extent to which a diverse public accepts the government's framing of security threats. They trace the origins of the perceptions of specific threats ranging from terrorism to environmental degradation, asking what it is that makes some people feel more frightened by these issues than others. They also examine the influence of threats on other areas of politics such as the stereotyping of minorities and the prioritising of public spending on border control. Finally, they evaluate the effectiveness of government efforts to change citizens' behaviour as part of the risk management cycle. What they find is that there is a widespread heterogeneity in the perception of security threats, with serious implications for the extent to which shared understandings of threats are an attainable goal.
Everyday security threats focuses on the British case, but its unusual combination of quantitative and qualitative methods makes broader theoretical and methodological contributions to scholarship in political science, international relations, political psychology, and security studies.
Trade Review'While citizens are asked to involve themselves increasingly in the management of ‘security’, practitioners and theorists have paid scant attention to public attitudes to security. This book addresses this issue, systematically exploring the attitudes of British citizens to security threats and their management, with some fascinating findings. Bringing together international relations and political psychology, as well as qualitative and quantitative methods, this important book is a fine example of the insights that can be developed through cooperative research beyond our academic silos.'
Matt McDonald is Associate Professor in the School of Political Science and International Studies at The University of Queensland, Australia
Daniel Stevens and Nick Vaughan-Williams have provided the most detailed account yet of the ways in which people identify and respond to a range of factors that can pose threats to themselves, the country they live in, and the world. This is a critically important focus of research in a contemporary world experiencing threats from terrorism, globalization, the environment, and much else. Using a creative combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the authors determine the range and scope of threats that people confront in their lives, the factors that help to explain why people perceive different threats, and the political consequences of different perceived threats. This book is must reading for scholars and others who want to understand how people identify and respond to security threats that governments are increasingly expected to manage.
Stanley Feldman, Department of Political Science, Stony Brook University
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Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. Perspectives on security threat politics
2. The 2012 study 'Public perceptions of threat in Britain'
3. The scope of security threats and their causes
4. Security threats and their consequences
5. Government, perceptions, and experiences of security threats, and citizen involvement in the risk management cycle
Conclusion
Index
