6 - The good of security

Summary

The cumulative critique of the role of the state in policing laid out in part I cannot easily be gainsaid. The state can be and often has been a physical and psychological bully. It is prone to meddling, to interfering where it is not wanted. It does take sides, and in so doing packs the hardest punch. It undoubtedly does seek to set the cultural climate and in some measure is successful, as it is in making life difficult or impossible for those who do not conform to the norms it encourages and defends. Finally, it will tend towards stupidity. Not only does it lack the means to answer all the key questions about individual and collective security, it often seems unable or unwilling to recognize this deficiency.

Yet, as our scepticism about state scepticism has sought to make clear, in concentrating on its dangers and limitations, the state sceptics have tended to be inattentive towards the continuing positive contribution of the state. They have paid insufficient regard to the case that the state, or its functional equivalent, remains indispensable to any project concerned with optimizing the human good of security, or, at least, have neglected the full implications of that possibility. To remedy that defect, and move beyond mere scepticism about state scepticism, demands a closer appreciation of the role of the state in the generation of social meaning and in the ordering of social practice pertaining to security.