The Perils of Engagement: A Space for Anthropology in the Age of Security

In the winter of 2006-2007, British anthropologists became embroiled in a series of protests about a planned research program on "radicalisation" to be jointly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. By linking research on so-called Islamic radicalisation to UK intelligence and UK counter-terrorism policy, the program, it was argued, posed unacceptable levels of risk to other researchers. This paper draws on the author's role in unsuccessful attempts to mediate between the academic critics and the funders, contextualized within a fuller account of the political and ethical implications of researching issues of "security." The paper concludes with some reflection on the hazards faced by the author's Sri Lankan colleagues, for whom issues of security are quite simply matters of life and death.