Sarah Esther Lageson. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2020 pp. vii-242. $34.95 cloth. ISBN 9780190872007 Critical studies of security have long examined the role of information technology, databases, dataveillance and predictive risk technologies in emerging security infrastructures. These studies will be immeasurably aided by Sarah E. Lageson’s new book on criminal records in the United States,… Read more »
Month: September 2020
Food as a weapon? The geopolitics of food and the Qatar-Gulf rift
On 4 June 2017, residents of Qatar rushed the country’s grocery aisles, stocking up on as much food as they could fit into their carts or their budget. Qatar had just become the subject of a far-reaching embargo by its regional Gulf neighbors, spearheaded by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In addition to cutting all… Read more »
Rashomon in the Sahel: Conflict Dynamics of Security Regionalism
Between 2013 and 2017, as a Ph.D. student I devoted my efforts to the attempt of analyzing in a comparative way the American, the French, and the European security initiatives towards one of the most unstable and conflict-prone regions in Africa, namely the Sahel. Since the beginnings of the Malian crisis in 2012, the Sahel… Read more »
The War Against Vague Threats: The Redefinitions of Imminent Threat and their Impact on Anticipatory Use of Force in the “War on Terror”
In this research project, I explored how the United States (U.S.) has redefined the concept of ‘imminent threat’ to relax the rules for anticipatory use of armed force against insurgent groups. In particular, two new definitions of imminent threat have changed the conduct of specific combat activities: drone strikes and ground combat operations. In the first part of the… Read more »
Book review: The Force of Nonviolence: The Ethical in the Political
Judith Butler. New York: Verso, 2020; pp. ix – 209. $26.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781788732765 In its shift away from traditional approaches to security studies that implied work done through the frame of war and a state-centric approach, debates regarding the discursive and theoretical implications of the concepts, grammars, methodologies, and schools that traditionally upheld the… Read more »