Description
Book SynopsisThis seminal work is the first fully to engage human security with power in the international system. It presents global governance not as impartial institutionalism, but as the calculated mismanagement of life, directing biopolitical neoliberal ideology through global networks, undermining the human security of millions. The book responds to recent critiques of the human security concept as incoherent by identifying and prioritizing transnational human populations facing life-ending contingencies en mass. Furthermore, it proposes a realignment of World Bank practices towards mobilizing indigenous provision of water and sanitation in areas with the highest rates of avoidable child mortality. Roberts demonstrates that mainstream IR's nihilistic domination of security thinking is directly responsible for blocking the realization of greater human security for countless people worldwide, whilst its assumptions and attendant policies perpetuate the dystopia its proponents claim is inevitable. Yet this book presents a viable means of achieving a form of human security so far denied to the most vulnerable people in the world.
Trade Review'This book is an excellent critique of the theoretical games that academics can become distracted by and the hegemonic norms that policy makers perpetuate as common sense. It stands as a timely intervention into the debate on human security and as an innovative critique of global governance as an over-arching problem in terms of achieving broad human security. It adopts a 'neo-Foucauldian' approach which presents neo-liberalism as the calculated mismanagement of global life.' Pauline Eadie, University of Nottingham 'David Roberts has produced a tightly argued and impassioned manifesto for human security on a global scale. A manifesto which puts basic human needs at the centre and which argues that the barriers to meeting them are far from insuperable. Starting with the needs of those marginalised by traditional approaches, Roberts offers a new and challenging vision of power, policy-making and security for the twenty-first century.' David Chandler, University of Westminster 'Driven by the spectre of preventable poverty and suffering, David Roberts delivers a devastating critique of the neoliberal global order. As a way of bridging the global life-chance divide, Roberts provides a persuasive argument in support of human security as a mobilising and emancipatory concept. This is a must read for all those interested not only in social justice but the means by which social protection can be applied globally.' Mark Duffield, University of Bristol
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Humanizing Security?
- 2. Global Governance or Global Hegemony?
- 3. A New 'Nebuleuse'?
- 4. Neoliberalism, Water and Sanitation
- 5. Social Reconstruction and World Bank Policy
- 6. Norms and Change
- Conclusion
