Symposium: The Value of [In]Security 2015

July 28 - 30, 2015
Alte Aula, Tübingen

Program

The – perceived, expressed and sometimes imposed or insinuated – need for more and more security has been increasingly shaping the political and societal systems. It seems to have pervaded almost every sphere of life. New security technologies are developed and implemented for surveillance, identification, access, tracking, targeting and much more. The “quantified self” is framed by discourses that moralize practices like smoking and unhealthy eating, both under the auspices of avoiding risk and hence securing individual health as well as reducing societal costs. The digitalized life strives – as primary or secondary object – to eliminate known insecurities and at the same time creates new ones. And knowledge finds itself more often than not in the realm of (epistemic) security, insecurity, uncertainty and risk, where the uncertainty of knowledge or “truth” is the secure common ground.

Keynotes

John Hamilton, Harvard Univerity, USA
Charles Raab, University of Edinburgh; GB
Rainer Treptow, Universität Tübingen, DE
Onora O`Neil, University of Cambridge

Sessions

Session I: Value Discourses in the Face of [In]-Securities
Session II: What Is Security? Unconventional Approaches
Session III: Blind Spots and Sore Points in Security Discourses
Session IV: (Post)Conflict Societies: Security and Ethics
Session V: "Enemies of the State": Securities and Vulnerabilities
Session VI: Security Technologies in the Face of Value Discourses