The moral dimension of resilience and civil defense

Contemporary liberal and democratic states have ‘securitized’ a growing number of issues by advancing the notion of societal security. The cure for late modernity insecurity is often proclaimed to be increased robustness and resilience. This paves the way for a proactive stance and the conception of building societal resilience in order to withstand future crises and disturbances. The preemptive logic of contemporary security and crisis management calls for a new type of resilient neoliberal subject who is willing to accept uncertainty and shoulder greater individual responsibility for her own security. The idea of individual responsibility is however a peculiar one when it comes to large scale crises on the societal level, or even in the event of war. While war preparedness in previous eras has been treated as a specific and elevated security situation, the contemporary conceptions of security now bind together societal and national security such that preparedness are turned into a central aspect of everyday existence. This coupling of crisis management and traditional security threats produces important changes in the power triangle discussed by Michel Foucault, which consists of sovereignty, discipline and governmental powers, with the latter having ‘population as its main target and apparatuses of security as its essential mechanism’ (Foucault, 2007: 107–108). More importantly, what may first appear as individual responsibility following a neoliberal logic or rationality do in fact introduce a moral dimension into security and generates new forms of citizen–citizen relations. In this paper, I tend to explore the moral implications of responsibilization of individuals with regard to security and societal crisis. My sense is that individual responsibilization, understood as the transfer of responsibility and accountability for ones safety from state or community to the individual adds a moral dimension well beyond the individual self-preservation. As such it may in fact disrupt the social fabric and the social contract of state-society-individual relations in modern societies. In the discourse of responsibilization that is present in countries such as Sweden and Norway, it is possible to discern the intern logic that follows from the encouragement of taking responsibility for oneself and one’s own security. This quickly extends to the care for the family and close relative, with a peculiar and traditional gendered understandings of different areas of responsibility for men and women respectively. But it also follows that by highlighting the ideal of being prepared and capable, rather than “burden” the state, society and neighborhood you contribute to the overall preparedness of society since scarce resources could be directed to those who are un-prepared and/or un-capable. What is the role of the state and public authorities in this new “programmatic” security regime that disrupts the liberalist social contract between the state and its citizens? Or –how much can a state ask of its citizens? This paper offers a discursive policy analysis of contemporary programmatic approaches to societal security and resilience in the face of crisis and war in Norway and Sweden.