Making Sense of the New Global Security
The purpose of this collaborative project is to provide a focussed framework for joint research into aspects of the new security agendas of the 2000s. These include human security, energy and food security; issues concerning migration and minorities; and questions about how complex emergencies which might arise from these security issues are managed. It also includes problems that arise from environmental problems and 'new' wars arising from ethnic or religious or identity conflicts (in their social and legal as well as political character). This does not necessarily preclude 'older' security issues, physical and territorial security, and their geopolitics, which are often wrapped into new security issues. It also necessarily touches on important questions of how institutional frameworks manage the new security agendas including questions of governance and the relationship between public and private authority, as well as an evaluation of the effectiveness of cooperative international bodies and non -governmental bodies in addressing specific security questions. The theory of new security agendas has been developing in a wide range of approaches and debates since the 'Copenhagen school' emerged in the early 1990s. Debates about securitization and desecuritization have found an important place alongside arguments about specific policy making and management issues. And the discourses of new and old security and the geopolitics of security has attracted much attention in political geography, political sociology and international relations journals.(...)
Dr. Chris Farrands