Spaces of Security and Insecurity

Fourteen papers presented by Ingram (U. College London, UK) and Dodds (Royal Holloway U. of London, UK) examine the "War on Terror" through the lens of critical geopolitics and geography. Central themes include the spatial vocabulary of international relations as revealed in such terms as "homeland," "international community," "failed state," "terrorist network," and "rogue state;" the ways in which ideas of security are used to invoke exceptional politics involving emergency measures, recourse to violence, and the reassertion of sovereignty; the governmentality of borders and mobility; the everyday geographies of securitization; and the inherently contested nature of the geographies of the "War on Terror." Specific topics include commemorative practices associated with the September 11th attacks and their role in legitimizing subsequent militarized projects, the imaginative geographies of US policymakers' understanding of events in the Philippines; the effects of the designation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as terrorist on the Tamil diaspora, the responses of UK non-governmental organizations concerned with asylum and immigration to the "War on Terror," the UK asylum and immigration system; the construction of New Zealand's biosecurity regime, the relationship between discourse about democracy and military "capabilities" in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the role of satellite television in transforming the broadcasting and security landscapes of the Middle East, the geopolitical culture of American evangelical Christianity, the geographical imaginations of British antiwar groups, and the counter-geographies of artists responding to the "War on Terror." Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Alan Ingram is Lecturer in Geography at University College London. Klaus Dodds is Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published five books and in 2005 was awarded the Philip Leverhulme prize for his achievements in the fields of geopolitics and political geography.