This volume analyses cultural perceptions of safety and security that have shaped modern European societies. The articles present a wide range of topics, from feelings of unsafety generated by early ...modern fake news to safety issues related to twentieth-century drug use in public space. The volume demonstrates how ‘safety’ is not just a social or biological condition to pursue but also a historical and cultural construct. In philosophical terms, safety can be interpreted in different ways, referring to security, certainty or trust. What does feeling safe and thinking about a safe society mean to various groups of people over time? The articles in this volume are bound by their joint effort to take a constructionist approach to emotional expressions, artistic representations, literary narratives and political discourses of (un)safety and their impact on modern European society.
In the absence of external security threats--and especially given that most of the EU member states are also members of NATO--what explains the European Union's commitment to a distinct, common ...security policy? What justifies channeling funds from cash-strapped European governments to finance that policy? Ranging from the early post -Cold War years to the present, Stephanie Anderson explores the arguably surprising motivation behind the EU's security and defense policy, how the ESDP has developed, how it has transformed the EU, and how it might further the European integration project.
How did the individual human being become the focus of the contemporary
discourse on security? What was the role of the United Nations in
securing the individual? What are the payoffs and costs of ...this
extension of the concept? Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong Khong tackle these
questions by analyzing historical and contemporary debates about what is to be
secured. From Westphalia through the 19th century, the state's claim to be the
object of security was sustainable because it offered its subjects some measure of
protection. The state's ability to provide security for its citizens came under
heavy strain in the 20th century as a result of technological, strategic, and
ideological innovations. By the end of World War II, efforts to reclaim the security
rights of individuals gathered pace, as seen in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and a host of United Nations covenants and conventions. MacFarlane and Khong
highlight the UN's work in promoting human security ideas since the 1940s, giving
special emphasis to its role in extending the notion of security to include
development, economic, environmental, and other issues in the 1990s.
The legitimate use of force is generally presumed to be the realm of the state. However, the flourishing role of the private sector in security over the last twenty years has brought this into ...question. In this book Deborah Avant examines the privatization of security and its impact on the control of force. She describes the growth of private security companies, explains how the industry works, and describes its range of customers – including states, non-government organisations and commercial transnational corporations. She charts the inevitable trade-offs that the market for force imposes on the states, firms and people wishing to control it, suggests a new way to think about the control of force, and offers a model of institutional analysis that draws on both economic and sociological reasoning. The book contains case studies drawn from the US and Europe as well as Africa and the Middle East.
Across the globe, from mega-cities to isolated resource enclaves, the provision and governance of security takes place within assemblages that are de-territorialized in terms of actors, technologies, ...norms and discourses. They are embedded in a complex transnational architecture, defying conventional distinctions between public and private, global and local. Drawing on theories of globalization and late modernity, along with insights from criminology, political science and sociology, Security Beyond the State maps the emergence of the global private security sector and develops a novel analytical framework for understanding these global security assemblages. Through in-depth examinations of four African countries – Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and South Africa – it demonstrates how global security assemblages affect the distribution of social power, the dynamics of state stability, and the operations of the international political economy, with significant implications for who gets secured and how in a global era.
Much more than a technical book. Erik’s work is a well documented journey into the multiple interactions between safety, work and human nature. A timely contribution to vindicate human beings and ...their variability from the one sided focus on the evils of human error. A groundbreaking look at ‘the other story’ that will certainly contribute to safer and more productive workplaces.
Dr Alejandro Morales, Mutual Seguridad, Chile
Safety needs a new maturity. We can no longer improve by simply doing what we have been doing, even by doing it better. DR Hollnagel brings forth new distinctions, interpretations, and narratives that will allow safety to progress to new unforeseen levels. Safety-II is more than just incident and accident prevention. A must read for every safety professional.
Tom McDaniel, Global Manager Zero Harm and Human Performance, Siemens Energy, Inc., USA
The emergence of a common security and foreign policy has been one of the most contentious issues accompanying the integration of the European Union. In this book, Michael Smith examines the specific ...ways foreign policy cooperation has been institutionalized in the EU, the way institutional development affects cooperative outcomes in foreign policy, and how those outcomes lead to new institutional reforms. Smith explains the evolution and performance of the institutional procedures of the EU using a unique analytical framework, supported by extensive empirical evidence drawn from interviews, case studies, official documents and secondary sources. His perceptive and well-informed analysis covers the entire history of EU foreign policy cooperation, from its origins in the late 1960s up to the start of the 2003 constitutional convention. Demonstrating the importance and extent of EU foreign/security policy, the book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and policy-makers.
In its 8th edition the SAFE conference continues to publish important research contributing to the development of the field. The papers included in this volume are the work of engineers, scientists, ...field researchers, managers and other specialists involved in one or more of the theoretical and practical aspects of safety and security.
In this book, Ashante M. Reese makes clear the structural forces that determine food access in urban areas, highlighting Black residents' navigation of and resistance to unequal food distribution ...systems. Linking these local food issues to the national problem of systemic racism, Reese examines the history of the majority-Black Deanwood neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Reese not only documents racism and residential segregation in the nation's capital but also tracks the ways transnational food corporations have shaped food availability. By connecting community members' stories to the larger issues of racism and gentrification, Reese shows there are hundreds of Deanwoods across the country. Reese's geographies of self-reliance offer an alternative to models that depict Black residents as lacking agency, demonstrating how an ethnographically grounded study can locate and amplify nuances in how Black life unfolds within the context of unequal food access.
