Three-dimensional security: Layers, spheres, volumes, milieus

Abstract

This paper critically engages with, and draws inspiration from the `vertical turn’ in political geographies of security. In so doing, I expose fragilities in its conceptual vocabulary and theoretical orientations, and call into question the security imaginaries on which notions of three-dimensional securitisation are predicated. This provides an important entry point for interdisciplinary dialogue at the intersections of political geography and security studies; while the latter is not especially noted for its contribution to the study of verticalities, re-reading `volumetric security’ through the spatial framings which underpin contemporary security studies does have considerable analytical merit and clears the ground – via Foucault's notion of the milieu - for (re)thinking three-dimensional security in ontologically, epistemologically and politically inventive ways.