Feeding Fear: The New Security Culture

Disaster, apparently, is everywhere these days. The Bush administration recently urged schools to conduct safety assessments of their buildings and to rehearse emergency evacuation routines. Many schools are practicing lockdowns where students are kept in their classrooms, doors locked, blinds lowered, and police officers are posted at entrances. Drills prepare students for emergency evacuations, teaching them different escape routes and assembly points in case of a crisis.

The American Red Cross has even developed a curriculum, aptly named “Masters of Disaster,” to help teachers address emergency issues in the classroom. Tailored for elementary and middle school children, the curriculum includes a customized kit of lesson plans, a video, a large classroom poster, stickers, and customizable certificates. A recent addition called “Facing Fear” helps children and their teachers deal with “a new kind of disaster”—terrorism. Activities for students in sixth grade include “Finding your family,” where, as part of the learning experience, students fill in a mock “Family Message Card” – the postcards used by the International Committee of the Red Cross to let family members separated by war communicate with each other. Each lesson includes an activity for the children to do at home with their families. Discussions of security are now a necessary component of education, along with reading and writing, as well as part of the fabric of family life.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) web site does its part to prepare young people by offering them the opportunity to become “Disaster Action Kids”. Children are welcomed into the world of disaster preparedness by FEMA’s web site spokesmodel, Herman, a hermit crab. Herman tells a story of his search for a disaster-proof shell. On the site, children learn how, like Herman, to protect their homes from disaster, how to treat their pets in an emergency, and how to assemble disaster supply kits that include toys, books, crayons, games and their favorite stuffed animal. Being a Disaster Action Kid is not easy, the site warns, but it is worthwhile and even fun.

FEMA recommends that children act out disaster scenes with small figures and play vehicles such as ambulances, fire trucks, helicopters, dump trucks, police cars and small boats. Once they have successfully completed the online module, they can print out an official certificate. FEMA also encourages adults to assemble an emergency supply kit that includes not only water, food and medicine, but a host of other items ranging from petroleum jelly to tongue depressor blades, a tube tent, a compass and a small shovel to dig a latrine. Drills, lockdowns, following disaster curricula and gathering together emergency kits are some of the practices entailed by a new organization of security.

Securitarianism

But security is not only about new routines; the “security measures” suggested by the Department of Homeland security and its agencies, have pierced into personal spaces, crept into workplaces and schools and seeped through the walls of private homes. The integration of these measures into daily routines is part of a phenomenon that we might call securitarianism – a combination of security and totalitarianism that affects the entire fabric of society and reaches into every corner of our lives. Securitarianism is not a planned and organized security network run and overseen by a central committee, but a set of measures that functions as if it were designed, organized and managed through a single organizing structure.

Securitarianism is not entirely new. The Red Scare and the Japanese Internment are both examples of vigilant security enforcement. What is new about the current securitarianism is not its focus on security or its emphasis on the need for public compliance, but rather the large number of institutions it acts through, the particular populations it targets, and the political aims it justifies in the name of a “war against terrorism”. The practices, routines, and habits adapted to the new security requirements are rapidly creating a new understanding of what it means to be safe. Security procedures affect how people feel about their safety. The “Masters of Disaster” curriculum, for example, teaches children how to behave in the case of a crisis and guides the ways they channel their emotions. But participants are also asked to rehearse their anxieties and articulate the fear of losing their loved ones. Most importantly, it cultivates in them a constant sense of danger, making apparent the perils and menaces they face on a daily basis.