Security Beyond the State
Private Security in International Politics

Investigates the implications of the globalization of private security for politics, security, and international relations.

Rita Abrahamsen (Author), Michael C. Williams (Author)

9780521154253, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 18 November 2010

280 pages, 1 b/w illus. 2 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm, 0.45 kg

'… provides rich empirical substance and food for thought to scholars from a variety of disciplines (evidenced by the substantial number of references to the authors' case studies by other scholars). This book is a very welcome addition to the growing, but limited, work on private security in Africa, and provides a new conceptual tool through which to engage with complex global and local security developments.' Julie Berg, African Affairs

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.

Introduction
1. The untold story: the globalization of private security
2. Late modernity and the rise of private security
3. Power and governance: global assemblages and the security field
4. Of oil and diamonds: global security assemblages in resource extraction
5. Safer cities or cities of walls? The politics of urban global security assemblages
6. Security, politics, and global assemblages.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], International relations [JPS], Politics & government [JP], Social services & welfare, criminology [JK], Sociology [JHB]