We are pleased to announce the
publication by Routledge of Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen’s new
co-edited book, Times of Security: Ethnographies of Fear, Protest and the
Future. For more information, visit Routledge’s webpages at http://routledge-ny.com/books/details/9780415628594/
In the current world disorder, security is on everyone’s lips. But what is security from a cross-cultural perspective? How is it imagined and experienced by people on the ground? Crucially, what visions of the future are at stake in people’s potentially divergent concerns with security: what, and when, is the time of security? Exploring diverse notions and experiences of time involved in security practices across the globe, this volume brings together a selection of international scholars who conduct ethnographic research in a broad ambit of securitized contexts - from the experience of Palestinian detainees in Israel or forms of popular violence in Bolivia, to efforts to normalize social relations in post-conflict Yugoslavia and ways of imagining threat in left-radical protest movements in Northern Europe. Interrogating recent debates about the role of “securitization” in contemporary politics, the book paves the way for novel forms of security analysis at the crossroads between anthropology and political science, focusing on the comparative study of the temporalities of securitization in a multi-polar world. Offering a pioneering synthesis, the book will be of interest not only to anthropologists, but also to students and scholars in political science and the growing field of Security Studies in International Relations.
“This edited book is central to the main currents of anthropological work on politics, and to the understanding of discourses of security. It addresses these bodies of literature, uniquely and creatively in the opinion of this reader, through a consideration of anthropological work on time and temporality - another lively and current key theme of much recent anthropology. Times of Security offers compelling ethnographies of security from a range of different geographical contexts, from South America to Europe and the Middle East, and at different scales, ranging from considerations of local contexts to nation states and even the planet in its entirety.” - Magnus Marsden, SOAS