What is security? The concept is dramatic enough to warrant the use of military force and declare states of emergency, and malleable enough for political rhetoric and fashion marketing. This course will critically explore the concept, discourse, and practice of security as a central organizing principle, reality, and relationship of the modern social-political order and its contemporary trajectory. Topics include the fundamental interrelation between security and order, including classic political, sociological and psychological approaches that look at processes of state-making/war-making and identity as a driver; critical assessments of conventional security frameworks, such as Securitization models, and feminist and post-colonial perspectives; terrorism and exception; technologies of control and surveillance; privatization and commodification; livelihoods, environment, migration and diseases as security issues; the shifting nature of emergencies and intervention; and, security knowledge as a form of power.

What is security? The concept is dramatic enough to warrant the use of military force and declare states of emergency, and malleable enough for political rhetoric and fashion marketing. This course will critically explore the concept, discourse, and practice of security as a central organizing principle, reality, and relationship of the modern social-political order and its contemporary trajectory. Topics include the fundamental interrelation between security and order, including classic political, sociological and psychological approaches that look at processes of state-making/war-making and identity as a driver; critical assessments of conventional security frameworks, such as Securitization models, and feminist and post-colonial perspectives; terrorism and exception; technologies of control and surveillance; privatization and commodification; livelihoods, environment, migration and diseases as security issues; the shifting nature of emergencies and intervention; and, security knowledge as a form of power.