Wrap up: New trends

“Great expectations”

The Nordic Societal Security Programme: Joint Nordic Conference, Stockholm,November 2014

Kenneth Pettersen

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Societal security research agenda – some key

themes/challenges

Research agendas in the Nordic countries all relate to fundamental challenges as well as requirements for impact.

1. How to define societal security?

Key concepts

Societal

Security

Safety

Risk

Vulnerability

Robustness

Trust

Resilience

2. There are different narratives and different objects of study

Societal security as identity vs

Societal security as function

Function Identity

3. These are interrelated but ask for different methodologies and theory

How to understand and manage the networks and “cultural” divides?

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4. Governance and public/private organization of societal security

What are the basic political functions that we have to define threats?

What is it that we have to look for and how?

How to regulate critical societal functions?

How to organize for reliability?

How to organize to be prepared for the unexpected?

5. Resilience

Societal security has to encompass generic capacities, in addition to controlled variability to anticipated problems we have to prepare for the unexpected

i.e. resilience at a societal level is different from a systems/organizational level, but what is it and what are the implications of a resilience rhetoric on security?

Societal security research agenda – some key themes/challenges II

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Safety for someone can be a danger for

someone else…

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Measures to reduce risk can do more harm

than good…

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Labelling someone as resilient can make

someone else less responsible…

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There is a distinct form of Nordic security

research emerging…

Fundamental challenges that require long-term investment

Looking beyond security as the politics of regret

Looking beyond security as innovation

Solutions are viewed as cross- and multidisciplinary

Shared interest in research questions that lend themselves

to the social sciences and humanities

Similar academia-public/private relationships characterized

by trust and understanding of each others goals and roles.

Researcher's have access to data

built on Nordic traditions for participatory research?

Reflexive and critical approaches are welcomed and given

funding

shared methodological approaches and concerns that could

benefit from increased collaboration

Europe and the world is watching and are interested!