Description
At the centre of the emergence of practice in the study of contemporary politics of cyberspace lies a deeply rooted concern with questions of agency and power – both material and non-material, human and non-human. The interplays of such interactions configure a playing field where attacks, vulnerabilities, incidents and infrastructures are constantly contested, reclaimed, negotiated and controlled. Much attention has been paid to the role of states and businesses in determining what is “knowable” and relevant when it comes to cybersecurity threats. Be it through public attribution, incident reports and/or privileged access to vast amounts of sensitive data, an excessive focus on cybersecurity companies and states can provide a myopic perspective of the different sites of knowledge production about security (technical security experts, for example). I argue that such interplays and contestations over in-securities in cybersecurity are precisely what offers a space for rethinking individual and collective agency - that is, a conceptual ground for emerging epistemologies and imaginaries about (cyber)security to be addressed. In asking “who gets to be an expert?” the paper questions the “place” of practice and knowledge in cybersecurity. To do so, it engages in a theoretical exercise of understanding the role of expertise as a conceptual key for addressing different security imaginaries.
