A pioneering contribution to the emergent anthropology of human security that brings classic concerns of the field into the 21st century.

Abstract:

Human security is about everyday realities of violent conflict and poverty, humanitarian crises, epidemic diseases, injustice and inequality. It is about freedom from fear and freedom from want. It is much different from state-related security with its emphasis on military force, territory and sovereignty. Human security places the security of individuals, communities and global humanity ahead of the security concerns of the state. How does human security relate to international security? Can human security still be advanced in a global climate of intrastate conflict, the war on terror and increasing nuclear tensions? This book challenges prevailing security thinking and explores basic standards of humanity. This multi-authored book deals with the origins and developments of human security as a concept and how it is used in policy practice. It presents new approaches by focusing on alternative discourses, the actors involved, and the new forms of governance that are required. It outlines the challenges human security faces in different parts of the world due to conflict, terrorism and new wars; globalisation and the resurgence of religion; development cooperation, environmental problems and the role of science. Facing the challenges, this book aims to raise human security out of the status of a contemporary 'problematique' by bringing it closer to a 'resolutique'. 'I am convinced that this book provides an original contribution and a further impetus to developing well-grounded academic and policy responses to world-wide problems that so urgently require solutions.' - M. S. Swaminathan, President, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.--Back cover.

Human Insecurity is concerned with our refusal to confront the millions of avoidable deaths of women and children each year. Those missing millions are rarely the subject of conventional security studies, yet such avoidable deaths are a vital part of the notion of 'security' more broadly understood. The book argues that such deaths are caused by the man-made structures of neoliberalism and 'andrarchy' and argues that the debate on human security can be reinvigorated by looking at the unarmed, civilian role in causing the deaths of millions of innocent people; from child deaths from preventable disease to honour killings. David Roberts claims that by facing up to this relationship between social structures and massive avoidable human suffering we can create another system less prone to global violence. This book is a powerful intervention in the debate on human security and an urgent call to face up to our responsibilities to the millions killed needlessly each year.

Human Resilience against Food Insecurity focuses on the human factors involved in building resilience against food and nutrition insecurity in perpetuity through better managing risks (such as 'better-spacing' of children), diversifying the asset portfolio, behavioral change, and communication strategies for to help achieve these goals. The better the coherence and convergence amongst these human factors that promote sustainable food and nutrition security, the lower the need to rectify their absence through post-facto, unsustainable 'firemen's work' of humanitarian assistance and CMAM clinics. The book includes references to countries which are not in the lowest of the categories prescribed in the UNDP Human Development reports, also including minority groups in developed countries, such as the hunter-gatherer Inuit communities of Canada, to provide an inclusive view of the issues and concerns relevant to addressing food insecurity. - Includes a global array of case studies - Presents stories of success and failure in building resilience against food insecurity with the causative human aspect underlying each - Addresses the social and cultural anthropological foundation of combatting food and nutrition insecurity

The Insecurity of Freedom is a collection of essays on Human Existence by one of the foremost Jewish thinkers of our time, Abraham Joshua Heschel.

This book explores the complex challenges that globalization poses for human security, many of which are already high on the agenda of the international community. By adding a human security dimension to their analysis, the authors provide new insight into attempts to reduce our vulnerability to the new forces unleashed by global changes.

Accumulating Insecurity examines the relationship between two vitally important contemporary phenomena: a fixation on security that justifies global military engagements and the militarization of civilian life, and the dramatic increase in day-to-day insecurity associated with contemporary crises in health care, housing, incarceration, personal debt, and unemployment. Contributors to the volume explore how violence is used to maintain conditions for accumulating capital. Across world regions violence is manifested in the increasingly strained, often terrifying, circumstances in which people struggle to socially reproduce themselves. Security is often sought through armaments and containment, which can lead to the impoverishment rather than the nourishment of laboring bodies. Under increasingly precarious conditions, governments oversee the movements of people, rather than scrutinize and regulate the highly volatile movements of capital. They often do so through practices that condone dispossession in the name of economic and political security.

Much political oratory has been devoted to safeguarding AmericaÕs boundary with Mexico, but policies that militarize the border and criminalize immigrants have overshadowed the regionÕs widespread violence against women, the increase in crossing deaths, and the lingering poverty that spurs people to set out on dangerous northward treks. This book addresses those concerns by focusing on gender-based violence, security, and human rights from the perspective of women who live with both violence and poverty. From the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, scholars from both sides of the 2,000-mile border reflect expertise in disciplines ranging from international relations to criminal justice, conveying a more complex picture of the region than that presented in other studies. Initial chapters offer an overview of routine sexual assaults on women migrants, the harassment of Central American immigrants at the hands of authorities and residents, corruption and counterfeiting along the border, and near-death experiences of border crossers. Subsequent chapters then connect analysis with solutions in the form of institutional change, social movement activism, policy reform, and the spread of international norms that respect human rights as well as good governance. These chapters show how all facets of the border situationÑglobalization, NAFTA, economic inequality, organized crime, political corruption, rampant patriarchyÑpromote gendered violence and other expressions of hyper-masculinity. They also show that U.S. immigration policy exacerbates the problems of border violenceÑin marked contrast to the border policies of European countries. By focusing on womenÕs everyday experiences in order to understand human security issues, these contributions offer broad-based alternative approaches and solutions that address everyday violence and inattention to public safety, inequalities, poverty, and human rights. And by presenting a social and democratic international feminist framework to address these issues, they offer the opportunity to transform todayÕs security debate in constructive ways.

Human Security and Mutual Vulnerability: The global political economy of development and underdevelopment (Second Edition)