‘Security Theatre’

Some sociological thoughts on a non-sociological concept

Resumo

This is intended as an introductory paper in two respects. Firstly, it is to introduce
readers to the concept ‘security theatre’, both as a linguistic device and to the phenomenon it
purports to designate. The argument in this paper also expresses the intention of contributing
to the burgeoning field, both academic and applied, of Security Studies. This contribution
takes the form of showing the potential, though currently hardly-realised, of the discipline of
Sociology as a significant participant in this field. The paper does not take a specific approach
within sociology to pursue this intention, but rather shows how various approaches within
sociology – ranging from general functionalism to deconstructionism – may contribute

in different ways to different aspects of security studies, including yet-unremarked or yet-
underdeveloped aspects of the field. This contribution is mainly relevant to the academic or

analytic aspects of security studies, but it is hoped also to have a ‘spin-off’ for the applied side
of that field, too. In the course of the development of the argument of the paper, it is hoped
that various consequential aspects of security theatre are rendered explicit and discussed, and
to this end some of the (still relatively few, alas) sociological studies of security arrangements
are employed. In particular, the paper sets out the purported opposition between ‘security
theatre’ and ‘real (‘genuine’) security arrangments’, suggests some useful tropes and other
methodological devices for the sociological analysis of ‘security theatre’ and, finally, the
paper suggests reasons for, and useful ways of achieving, the deconstruction of the ‘security
theatre’-‘real security’ opposition. In all, in this paper it is hoped to open up, in a preliminary
way, new perspectives on ‘security theatre’ and to highlight empirical aspects of it that might,
in sociology’s absence, have been relegated to the background.