Jef Huysmans is Lecturer in Government and Politics at The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. Andrew Dobson is Professor and Director of Research at the Department of Politics and Government at The Open University. Raia Prokhovnik is Senior Lecturer in Government and Politics, also at The Open University.

• 1. Agency and The Politics of Protection: Implications for Security Studies 2. Privatizing the Politics of Protection: Military Companies and the Definition of Security Concerns 3. Privatisation, Globalisation, and the Politics of Protection in South Africa 4. Taking Rights, Mediating Wrongs: Disagreements over the Political Agency of Non-Status Refugees 5. Resisting Sovereign Power: Camps In-between Exception and Dissent 6. Protection: security, territory and population 7. "Civilizing" the Balkans, Protecting Europe: the International Politics of Reconstruction in Bosnia and Kosovo 8. The Judicialisation of Armed Conflict: transforming the 21st Century 9. The Limits of Agency in Times of Emergency 10. Sovereignty, International Security and the Regulation of Armed Conflict: the Possibilities of Political Agency 11. Do we need (to protect) nature? 12. On the Protection of Nature and the Nature of Protection

'This collection of essays provides a meeting point for theorists and practitioners to discuss the current controversies surrounding security and protection.'- Alistair D. B. Cook , The University of Melbourne