In order to systematically trace the private production of security and violence in areas of limited statehood, this article discusses three hybrid forms of security: (1) institutionalised security-governance in emerging non-state dynamics of violence; (2) self-governance as the local response to strategic or indiscriminate forms of violence; (3) commercialised security as the growing tendency to delegate protection from various threats to specialists from the private sector. The different dynamics relate to the logic of markets of security in areas where the state's monopoly of the use of force has collapsed and different private actors compete over territorial control, natural resources and the recruitment of members.