University and Security. Events, Situations, and Communities

Abstract

This article discusses the sense of security in the University of Antioquia’s community. In the first place, it describes how the characteristics of the research, its subject, and the place in which it was carried out leaded to broadening its objectives, and helped to establish the theoretical and methodological framework of the investigation. Secondly, the research identifies the actors involved in establishing the sense of security on campus using the securitization theory approach, and based on the hypothesis that the sense of (in)security is a collective construction. The article also explores different factors, such as values, interpretations, events, situations, actors, and contexts, involved in the construction of meaning. The main conclusion is that in spite of the diversity and contradictory meanings attributed to the so-called “cases of insecurity,” there is some kind of agreement on the meaning of some important cases. Moreover, the analysis shows that the community of the university is the principal actor that decides how to establish the sense of security and the cases of insecurity, instead of external actors.