The Psychology of Securitization: Risks, Threats and Socially Shared Cognition

Securitization theory conceptualizes social agency for a widely expanding agenda in the social construction of dangers. This article posits securitization against the notion of danger as exposure, explicit deprivation of initiative, as resignation of agency. Accordingly, particular modes of securitizing dangers, for example ‘risk’ or ‘security’, differ not so much on the extent to which they exhibit exceptionalism, but rather in terms of how they approach contingency through agency. Agency emerges and is socially attributed as part of society’s reflexive securitization of a danger. Consequently, what counts politically is the attributability of agency. The social processes underlying the attendant volatility of meaning and the consequences for social agency in securitization can be captured by introducing the social psychological concept of ‘shared reality’. Shared reality theory facilitates a more flexible appreciation of the social processes involved in the intersubjective establishment of dangers. Accordingly, securitization refers to a) a process that establishes a shared reality, and b) an agency mechanism of engaging contingency in a particular mode of processing danger. The article thus makes the case for complementing the contextual embedding of securitization through re-considering agency in a step towards a comprehensive theory of the social construction of dangers in international relations.