Tim Glawion’s thoughtful and engaging study of forms of security ordering in three notionally “fragile” polities challenges essentializing narratives of “state failure” in Africa and presents a bottom-up analysis grounded in the lived realities of the actors and communities he engages with. Drawing on field research across sites of varying degrees of (in)security in Central African Republic (CAR), Somaliland, and South Sudan, he introduces the concept of “security arena” to capture and analyze the space in which different actors interact (or decline to interact) “on the issue of physical integrity” in a particular locality (p. 20). His research— conducted in three states traditionally relegated to the bottom (or top) of indices on conflict, state failure, and insecurity—underscores the complex, varying, and evolving ways in which (in)security is ordered, maintained, and governed within, as well as between territories.
A key and important contribution of The Security Arena in Africa is therefore empirical. Glawion draws on more than 300 interviews and focus-group discussions conducted over several trips to nine locations (from villages and neighborhoods to towns and cities) as he focuses his analysis on reconstructing the perceived security arenas of his respondents. As the book notes, these sites are significantly underresearched (p. 43), and the study therefore sheds valuable new light on the experiences of communities and groups whose voices are less often heard in comparative security studies. The selection of cases according to population size, the presence of government security institutions and/or international peacekeepers, levels of security, and distance to the national capital or a major administrative center also allows Glawion to compare and contrast the often different security ordering arrangements found in sites within the same polity. This not only enables the narration of underexamined local dynamics of security governance but also facilitates the contestation of sometimes lazy generalizations found in studies of African security. The Somaliland case, for example, underscores how proximity to the national capital does not necessarily equate to greater security, whereas the significant variation found between all three country cases challenges their homogenization by some based on “alleged commonalities in the reduced role of the central state in the life of its people” (p. 43).
The data also allow, of course, for the building of a conceptual framework to explain the ordering processes and variation described. Indeed, it is here where the book makes its principal contribution both from the perspective of comparative security studies and, to some extent, the world of policy and practice. Glawion points to four key findings on ordering security, developed across the book’s layered analytical narrative. The first—center–periphery relations—argues that historical patterns of such dynamics, from violent imposition and resistance (South Sudan) to neglect (CAR), create a path dependency that strongly influences security ordering in the contemporary era (chapters 2 and 3). This discussion is particularly compelling and enables Glawion to reflect on the more structural dimensions of state-building and the legacies of colonialism and conflict in a manner that his actor-focused approach can elsewhere at times obscure.
The second contribution is derived from the innovative security “mapping” exercise conducted with those interviewed during fieldwork. A distinction is made here between inner circles of security activity—where actors regularly interact and establish stable patterns of security ordering—and outer circles that are more fluid and can represent sites of violent renegotiation of security governance, particularly when the lines between these circles are crossed (chapter 4). The third contribution, which in many respects represents the main organizing fulcrum of the analysis, depicts security arenas as being positioned on a spectrum somewhere between “stable” and “fluid” ordering (chapters 5–7). Different actors and spaces may be positioned at different ends of the spectrum but they are frequently mixed in reality, and critically, neither form of ordering necessarily leads to greater security than the other. “The spectrum,” Glawion notes, “only describes how ordering processes take place and leaves open to analysis the outcome for security” (p. 218).
The final contribution, which links most closely to—for want of a better term—policy recommendations relates to embedding or detaching intervention (chapter 8). Drawing on ideas developed earlier in the study, this analysis discusses the dilemmas that international intervenors (present, via UN missions, in both CAR and South Sudan) face in approaching the critical, but less codified, “fluid” end of the ordering spectrum and the security arena located in the “outer circle.” As Glawion rightly explains, international intervenors are often reluctant to engage in these spaces for a range of reasons, but “experiences on the ground show that fluid ordering actors will not let themselves be ignored,” potentially imperilling peacekeeping missions themselves (pp. 226–27). This is an important point but is perhaps more an implication of the study’s core arguments than a central finding. Indeed, the discussion essentially provides additional empirical evidence for arguments previously made on the sociological and organizational limitations of international peacebuilding interventions by scholars of peace and conflict studies, particularly those working on “hybridity.”
The Security Arena in Africa is a refreshingly honest and contemplative work in terms of its voice. Glawion is candid and straightforward in his outlining of the methodological challenges and trade-offs faced in undertaking the fieldwork. Thus, he study represents, in this regard, a valuable contribution to the burgeoning literature on the politics and ethics of research in conflict-affected regions (chapter 1, in particular). At times the book perhaps undersells itself in the qualifications it makes, particularly around generalizability. However, the final analysis would have been strengthened by at least some reflection on how applicable the core concepts—security arena and stable/fluid ordering—might be in other types of polities. In particular, Glawion might consider how far the analysis holds in countries relatively close to those explored in the study—such as Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Uganda—where manifestations of public authority have historically been felt more profoundly in the periphery.
My principal question for Glawion is, however, more of a conceptual one and concerns his definition and operationalization of the term “(in)security” itself. In a study that seeks to move beyond Weberian intellectual models, his emphasis on insecurity as the “felt threat of physical harm” (p. 20) arguably reproduces a particular Weberian understanding of the experience. Glawion is characteristically thoughtful about this analytical decision and acknowledges the ambiguities of some of his data in this regard, which could “suggest something more than an immediate threat to physical integrity” (p. 22). He also emphasizes the bottom-up delineation of this conceptualization— which draws on asking his respondents, “What makes you feel secure or insecure?” (p. 21)—but I wonder how far even the very mention of the terms (in)secure/(in)security, regardless of language, may have conditioned his interviewees’ responses and led them to focus on more “traditional” state-centric notions of (in)security.
In a brief and revealing discussion, for example, the book reflects on how “fluid protection is not only against the visible” and that “local security issues that people of the CAR want resolved include obscure forms of retribution, including witchcraft and popular justice” (p. 182). Glawion rightly suggests that such issues can be “overstated,” and indeed Western researchers must be careful not to exoticize and stereotype the (in)security narratives they relay, particularly in regions and areas where the threat of physical violence, from a range of actors, is very real. There is a risk, however, that a focus on physical integrity and the language of (in)security may preclude an analysis of the wider security arena and the full scope of actors involved. This may indeed extend to the spiritual realm, where physical integrity can be perceived as at risk not only from popular justice but also, as Glawion notes, from the “shadow world behind the everyday” (p. 182). (In)security is also experienced across a range of registers from the ontological to the normative. It is a surprise, in this regard, that the fascinating conceptual discussion that frames the study (chapter 1) does not engage more with vernacular and feminist security studies in fleshing out its agenda and approach.
This is not to detract from the valuable and lasting contribution of this impressive book. As well as introducing a novel and innovative framework for understanding security dynamics in a way that reflects their nuances and complexities, the study also skillfully repositions the debate on the postcolonial state in Africa. Glawion takes seriously the perceptions and experiences of his respondents. In doing so, he shows that far from being a distant, Potemkin village-esque mirage, the state in these notionally undergoverned polities looms large, even if it is one of many security actors. This may be felt in the form of military encampments or those individuals who combine traditional and state leadership roles. It is the idea of the state, however, that can give actors authority in the security arena, even when the actual architecture of the state may be largely absent. Even in areas of “limited statehood,” Glawion notes, authority can derive not from “the asserted state authority but the idea of it” (p. 144).
