Security Beyond the State

Rita Abrahamsen is Associate Professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. She has lectured and published widely on African politics, and is currently joint-editor of the journal African Affairs. She is the author of Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa. Michael C. Williams is Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. He is a widely-recognised scholar of international relations theory and security studies and the author of The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Culture and Security: Symbolic Power and the Politics of International Security.

• 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.

'Security Beyond the State succeeds on several counts. For those interested in emerging security patterns, it provides a tour of the horizon on critical but neglected issues. For those interested in globalization, it demonstrates how globalization is shaping the production of security on a global scale and shifting its management to the private realm. For those interested in international relations theory, it pushes on some of the most taken-for-granted categories, including the basic function of the state and the location of modern sovereignty. And, it is one of those rare books that will be profitably read by both scholars and practitioners alike.' Michael Barnett, University of Minnesota