Between fear and freedom: understanding the relationship between securitization and the disavowal of social and ecological interdependency

In this thesis, I am interested in the concept of ‘public protection’ and how it appears in policies, practices and discourses that justify and legitimize greater securitization and privatization of the public realm—while encouraging suspicion and fear of others. Specifically, I want to highlight a paradox in measures that promise public protection; they do not make anyone safer. Instead, I find they constitute and reconstitute the neoliberal social order and keep people passive and apart. Rather than addressing the structural realities of neoliberal capitalism, with its life or death consequences, governance seems focused on promoting a feeling of security and comfort premised on not being affected by others. In protecting against unwanted affect, the possibility of encounter, spontaneity and conflict are eliminated. Yet this is de-democratizing; it results in passive, apathetic subjects who are unable and unwilling to recognize their interdependency and act in concert to resist structural challenges that actually pose risks to collective safety and wellbeing. Therefore, I pose two interrelated questions. First, how are subjects and their relationships with one another impacted by measures to protect the public? Then, I ask what practices or modes of resistance could generate subjects more capable of coming together to challenge structurally produced harm and vulnerability? To address these questions, I use a theoretical collage methodology and weave together theoretical work from a range of disciplines focusing on discourses of stranger danger, defensible design, surveillance, antisocial behavior policies, Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs), privately owned public spaces (POPs) and anti-protest legislation. Ultimately, I conclude by arguing for joyful, caring and disobedient forms of protest as a practice of the right to the city. In creating a different world—even temporarily on the streets—we can change ourselves and how we relate to others and the world.