The other side of securitization is the increasing concern over securing space in societies where notions of the public sphere and civic participation have collapsed into isolated consumer individualism and a culture of fear (Giroux 2006, 1–18; see also Puar 2007). Securitization here refers to the imperative to pre-empt and avoid threats to perceived normality, and to ensure that people can go about their business and conduct their commerce without interruption. Securitization, then, takes the form of increased policing, surveillance and (racialized) suspicion. Securitization both intimates and thrives on a sort of generalized, depoliticized paranoia driven by media representations of crime and chaos that distort audiences' sense of the world beyond their immediate circumstances and prey upon a generalized state of increasing material insecurity wrought by neoliberalism (Bauman 2006) – identified in Chapter 2 as the liquidation of society into speculative wealth.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 259