Author: Security Dialogue

My paper on stockpiling, published in Security Dialogue, began with party conversations. When I told people that I work on catastrophe preparedness, the conversation inevitably shifted towards stockpiling. Concerned friends would ask how much food, water, and candles you have to store to be safe during an emergency. The gentrification critic would remark that we… Read more »

Why are local communities so often targeted in South Sudan’s civil wars? How do their attackers justify violence against people defined as civilians in international law? In our article in the current issue of Security Dialogue, we answer these questions by placing recent brutalities within a longer history of conflict logics and practices in South… Read more »

In January 2018, the Turkish military and allied Syrian rebel forces launched a military operation against Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) fighters in Afrin in Northern Syria. In the aftermath, Turkish authorities arrested, detained, and prosecuted 648 people for social media posts criticizing the military operation. In addition to state actors, civilian informants were involved… Read more »

Evans, Brad & Lennard, Natasha, Violence: Humans in Dark Times. San Fransisco, CA: City Lights Books, 2018, 335 pp., ISBN-10 0872867544 In her writings on violence and totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt famously used the term “dark times” to refer to not just the monstrosities of the 20th  century, but the necessity of countering violence with sustained… Read more »

Over the past twenty years feminist activists, civil society groups, and international organisations have argued that there is a need to actively consider gender in all aspects of security policy. Demanding shifts in the way that Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) and Security Sector Reform (SSR) programmes are delivered has been one of the most… Read more »

  In December 2018, a civilian drone operator allegedly disrupted hundreds of flights at Gatwick Airport in the UK by flying an industrial class drone across the flight path of aircrafts, causing a major political and security incident. To be sure, the Gatwick drone was neither the first nor the last such incident – similar… Read more »

‘Think Privacy’ Public Service Announcements by the Privacy Gift Shop ©Adam Harvey 2016 Adam Harvey is an award-winning artist and researcher based in Berlin. His work has been widely covered in such publications as the New York Times, CNN and the Huffington Post, and has also been cited by critical theorists such as Grégoire Chamayou and… Read more »

Leena Vastapuu (2018) Liberia’s Women Veterans: War, roles and reintegration, London: Zed Books Ltd. Book review by Linn Marie Reklev Scholars and policy makers put increasing attention on the role of women in conflict and peacebuilding. However, women are often portrayed as “victims”, and their multiple roles in conflict are often ignored. Leena Vastapuu’s new… Read more »

On 14 August 2013, we watched televised news in horror as Egyptian security forces brutally attacked largely peaceful sit-ins of Muslim Brotherhood supporters protesting against the removal of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. In just 12 hours, the state’s use of live ammunition, snipers, armoured vehicles and bulldozers led to the deaths of… Read more »

A world without the need for critique is unthinkable. And yet, Critical Security Studies (CSS) have learned that critique is a difficult and far from self-evident exercise. The Security Dialogue 50th anniversary issue builds on this legacy and addresses, once again, the specter of critique. It is an attempt to give words to the messy… Read more »