Securing the separation between state and finance: entanglements between securitization and societal differentiation

This paper discusses interventions by Max Weber in order to consider how sociological understandings of societal differentiation – most importantly, between the state and the financial economy – can be framed in terms of ‘securitization’ as proposed by critical security studies (CSS). I engage with relevant IR and IPE literature in two ways. First, I refer to IR approaches to securitization, which relate their arguments to theories of societal differentiation – for instance, invoking ‘sectors’ or ‘fields’ of securitization – to draw attention to a sociological imagination that is operative in critical security studies. Second, I use IPE literature on the ‘security/finance nexus’ to consider how the entanglement of security and financial considerations, priorities and agendas in different historical sites and institutional contexts provides insights for reconceptualizing the distinction between state and financial economy. I then reflect on the ways that understandings of societal differentiation might provide a triangulating moment, whereby the interrelation between security and finance can be addressed as a shared ground, not only for IPE and IR and their genealogies but also for that of sociological theory.