Assembling the Psycurity Accord in Response to the Early COVID-19 Outbreak in Aotearoa New Zealand

The COVID-19 crisis brought about increased surveillance, restrictions on movement, loss of freedoms, and the shutdown of ‘normal’ everyday life in Aotearoa New Zealand. Complex interplays of power, choice, and coercion in relation to people ceding their privacy and freedom to the state in return for the potential of health and economic security were brought to the fore. This chapter explores these dialectical tensions around risks and [in]securities in civil society using the multi-faceted lens offered by Assemblage Theory, and concepts of the Social Contract. The ‘Psycurity Accord’ offers an explanatory tool for understanding trade-offs between various risks and (in)securities, and issues of privacy and freedom. With references to different news updates regarding the evolving crisis, we consider how trade-offs around risks and [in]securities are never fixed and are re-assembled as new events occur, and the situation evolves. New orders of authority emerge from (re)alignments of different interest groups and (re)inscriptions around risk, security, freedom, and privacy.