Loitering forbidden - The Perception of Security in Public Spaces as Arena of Negotiation of Public Order

Beschreibung

My research focuses on the public’s perception of security or lack of security in public spaces, with a special focus on the actions of the powerful organization police. Security has been a central topic in national, European and global contexts since the early 2000s. The political claim “We must increase security for citizens” is a central narrative, motivating many important police activities, hence has major influence on social actors and the meso-level of organizations (eg. police, social work) working in the security field. My project is methodologically embedded within the situational and discourse analysis of Clarke and Keller and goes further back to the classic works of Goffman about social interaction and social order in public spaces developed in the 1950s.
Security has been a central topic for discourse analysis in the Foucauldian tradition ; in my research I use the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) framework and Situational Analysis for concrete problematic situations in Austrian urban areas. To link the analysis of security discourses with the (i) perception of security and the (ii) actual practices in concrete problematic situations (recently discussed as subjectivation ), I have developed a research method, the vignette-based focus group. This method elicits vignettes (short narratives about specific scenarios), to focus on particular situations (e.g. involving conflict between ethnic groups) in specific public spaces (e.g. a limited geographical area). Grounded in empiric data, this paper combines the sociological concept of the situation (and its practices) with a SKAD focus, conceptualizing the organisation (in my example the police) as a mediator between the sphere of practices and the sphere of discourses.

Zeitraum	19 Sept. 2019 → 20 Sept. 2019
Ereignistitel	Practice-based perspecitves in organizational psychology - A research conference celebrating the 40-year anniversary of the Research Institute of Organizational Psychology
Veranstaltungstyp	Keine Angaben
Bekanntheitsgrad	International