Spaces Of Security And Insecurity

Drawing on critical geopolitics and related strands of social theory, this book combines new case studies with theoretical and methodological reflections on the geographical analysis of security and insecurity. It brings together a mixture of early career and more established scholars and interprets security and the war on terror across a number of domains, including: international law, religion, migration, development, diaspora, art, nature and social movements. At a time when powerful projects of globalization and security continue to extend their reach over an increasingly wide circle of people and places, the book demonstrates the relevance of critical geographical imaginations to an interrogation of the present.

Drawing on critical geopolitics and related strands of social theory, this book combines new case studies with theoretical and methodological reflections on the geographical analysis of security and insecurity. It brings together a mixture of early career and more established scholars and interprets security and the war on terror across a number of domains, including: international law, religion, migration, development, diaspora, art, nature and social movements. At a time when powerful projects of globalization and security continue to extend their reach over an increasingly wide circle of people and places, the book demonstrates the relevance of critical geographical imaginations to an interrogation of the present.

Drawing on critical geopolitics and related strands of social theory, this book combines new case studies with theoretical and methodological reflections on the geographical analysis of security and insecurity. It brings together a mixture of early career and more established scholars and interprets security and the war on terror across a number of domains, including: international law, religion, migration, development, diaspora, art, nature and social movements. At a time when powerful projects of globalization and security continue to extend their reach over an increasingly wide circle of people and places, the book demonstrates the relevance of critical geographical imaginations to an interrogation of the present.

An ethnographic investigation into the dynamics between space and security in countries around the world It is difficult to imagine two contexts as different as a soccer stadium and a panic room. Yet, they both demonstrate dynamics of the interplay between security and space. This book focuses on the infrastructures of security, considering locations as varied as public entertainment venues to border walls to blast-proof bedrooms. Around the world, experts, organizations, and governments are managing societies in the name of security, while scholars and commentators are writing about surveillance, state violence, and new technologies. Yet in spite of the growing emphasis on security, few truly consider the spatial dimensions of security, and particularly how the relationship between space and security varies across cultures. This volume explores spaces of security not only by attending to how security is produced by and in spaces, but also by emphasizing the ways in which it is constructed in the contemporary landscape. The book explores diverse contexts ranging from biometrics in India to counterterrorism in East Africa to border security in Argentina. The ethnographic studies demonstrate the power of a spatial lens to highlight aspects of security that otherwise remain hidden, while also adding clarity to an elusive and dangerous way of managing the world.

Showing how the upswell of paranoia and growing demand for security in the post-9/11 world has paradoxically created widespread insecurity, these varied essays examine how this anxiety-laden mindset erodes spaces both architectural and personal, encroaching on all aspects of everyday life. Starting from the most literal level—barricades and barriers in front of buildings, beefed up border patrols, gated communities, "safe rooms,"—to more abstract levels—enhanced surveillance at public spaces such as airports, increasing worries about contagion, the psychological predilection for fortified space—the contributors cover the full gamut of securitized public life that is defining the zeitgeist of twenty-first century America

In recent times, the Blue Berets have become markers of peace and security around the globe. Yet, the iconoclastic symbol of both the Blue Beret and the Blue Helmet continue to engage the international political imagination in ways that downplay the inconsistent effects of peacekeeping missions on the security of local people. In this book, Paul Higate and Marsha Henry develop critical perspectives on UN and NATO peacekeeping, arguing that these forms of international intervention are framed by the exercise of power. Their analysis of peacekeeping, based on fieldwork conducted in Haiti, Liberia and Kosovo, suggests that peacekeeping reconfigures former conflict zones in ways that shape perceptions of security. This reconfiguration of space is enacted by peacekeeping personnel who 'perform' security through their daily professional and personal practices, sometimes with unanticipated effects. Insecure Spaces' interdisciplinary analysis sheds great light on the contradictory mix of security and insecurity that peace operations create.

Warfare in the twenty-first century goes well beyond conventional armies and nation-states. In a world of diffuse conflicts taking place across sprawling cities, war has become fragmented and uneven to match its settings. Yet the analysis of failed states, civil war, and state building rarely considers the city, rather than the country, as the terrain of battle. In Cities at War, Mary Kaldor and Saskia Sassen assemble an international team of scholars to examine cities as sites of contemporary warfare and insecurity. Reflecting Kaldor’s expertise on security cultures and Sassen’s perspective on cities and their geographies, they develop new insight into how cities and their residents encounter instability and conflict, as well as the ways in which urban forms provide possibilities for countering violence. Through a series of case studies of cities including Baghdad, Bogotá, Ciudad Juarez, Kabul, and Karachi, the book reveals the unequal distribution of insecurity as well as how urban capabilities might offer resistance and hope. Through analyses of how contemporary forms of identity, inequality, and segregation interact with the built environment, Cities at War explains why and how political violence has become increasingly urbanized. It also points toward the capacity of the city to shape a different kind of urban subjectivity that can serve as a foundation for a more peaceful and equitable future.