Resumo

CUNHA, Manuela  e  DURAO, Susana. On the meaning of security: reductions and ambiguities. Etnográfica [online]. 2011, vol.15, n.1, pp.53-66. ISSN 0873-6561.

Security and insecurity are approached here through an exploratory broad focus that intentionally departs from narrow definitions of the subject. It takes issue with current frameworks that have gradually confined these notions to one of their dimensions and have isolated it from its complex relationships with others. In doing so, they also have abstracted it from other aspects of social life in which it is embedded. Renewing with the wide scope of such notions, which include connotations of stability, predictability, protection, or, on the contrary, vulnerability and precariousness, we examine their reductionist understandings and the ambiguities that surround them. We therefore aim to recover sufficient analytical room to accommodate in such categories aspects related to the provision of security and the production of insecurity at the various levels they may emerge, from ideological notions and cultural perceptions, to social relationships, institutional practices, and the workings of the State and its agents. It is in this framework that we present the contents of this issue.

Palavras-chave : security; perceptions of insecurity; social protection; social vulnerability; notions of risk.

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