Editors: Tessa Diphoorn and Tomas Salem

Thinking of security through sensing invites us to move beyond abstract notions of power, protection, or control, and instead to ask how security feels, where it resides, how it appears, and how it is experienced through the material world around us, through the relational interplay of spirit and matter, subjectivity and objectivity; how we feel it as citizens and anthropologists.

This feature will delve into diverse ethnographic examples, exploring how material and sensory dimensions of security manifest in various contexts, challenging conventional understandings and opening new avenues for anthropological inquiry. The essays in the feature trace how the sensory is mobilized to maintain or subvert orders of control across settings as diverse as Rome’s Roma camps, Mozambique’s protest mobilizations, Denmark’s urban margins, and the entry halls of houses in Brazil’s urban middle-class neighbourhoods.