Nuclear (in)security in the everyday: peace campers as everyday security practioners

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Abstract

This article extends the emergent focus on ‘the everyday’ in Critical Security Studies to the topic of nuclear (in)security, through an empirical study of anti-nuclear peace activists understood as ‘everyday security practitioners’. In the first part of the article, I elaborate on the notion of everyday security practitioners, drawing particularly on feminist scholarship, while in the second I apply this framework to a case study of Faslane Peace Camp in Scotland. I show that campers emphasise the everyday insecurities of people living close to the state’s nuclear weapons, the blurred boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and the inevitability of insecurity in daily life. Moreover, campers’ security practices confront the everyday reproduction of nuclear weapons and prefigure alternative modes of everyday life. In so doing, I argue, they offer a distinctive challenge to dominant deterrence discourse, one that is not only politically significant, but also expands understanding of the everyday in Critical Security Studies.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)289-305
Number of pages17
JournalSecurity Dialogue
Volume49
Issue number4
Early online date2 May 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Aug 2018

Keywords

  • everyday (in)security
  • Faslane peace camp
  • Critical security studies
  • peace movement
  • anti-nuclear

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