Posthuman security

2021

A couple of years ago I invited a group of scholars (including several of the authors in this E-IR series on) to get together and share their views on something called ‘posthuman security’. While we all had different disciplinary backgrounds, expertise, questions and commitments, we shared the intuition that international security is not solely a matter of securing human lives and bodies. Instead, we contended that diverse beings other than humans are implicated in the conditions of (in)security. With this in mind, we wanted to think collectively about what the notion of ‘security’ means in worlds intersected and co-constituted by various kinds of beings: humans, other organisms, machines, elemental forces, diverse materials – and hybrids of all of the above. In turn, we wanted to think about what the ‘posthuman’ means when we bring it into the realm of security. For instance, does embracing a more-thanhuman or post-human ontology mean giving up on notions of security as stability, ...

2015

The purpose of this paper is not only to emphasize that the human security is not a new concept, in fact, the human security is the key component of the international system from which states and nations originate and maintain its stability. The modern concept of human security identifies the weaknesses of this traditional paradigm of the security which in itself is focused on the state security instead of individual security. The overwhelming security concept, traditionally has been state centric, expanding the support and legitimacy of state instruments and supported by the principle of state sovereignty. The ideal state of Plato, Aristotle statement, Hobs concept on Leviathan, the Prince of Machiavelli and above all the Marx concept of ’The dictatorship of the Proletariat’ show the final goal of the state on security, individual and community security, although they have differing views on the means to achieve this goal. There exist several ties between the human rights and human...

32(1) WISCONSIN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL 95-141 (2014)

Since the mid-1990s, a new concept has entered into international discourse: human security. The concept Human security seeks to create a paradigm shift in conceptions of security. It aims to relocate the focus of protection from the state to individuals and to expand the scope of the conception of security from military security into broader areas, such as protection from hunger, natural disaster, poverty, and other threats not traditionally conceptualized in terms of security. Human security reflects the need for conceptual innovation in political, legal, national, and international discourse. This article presents a conceptual analysis of human security. It clarifies the distinctions between national security and human security, and demonstrates how this term cuts across the familiar dichotomy between human rights and security by approaching subjects that were typically the concern of human rights discourse through a security prism. Human security thus requires revised thinking in both international and domestic law about, inter alia, the identification of threats to the security of the individual and the relationship between a government and its citizens. The article offers a critical study of the human security concept. The author argues that although human security is normatively appealing, it suffers from numerous analytical shortcomings. Therefore, instead of promoting new concepts, the author argues that it is more useful to concentrate on the familiar concept of rights. If the aspiration is to protect human security in the broad sense, the international community should focus its efforts on the protection, promotion and realization of civil and political rights, together with social, economic, and cultural rights, instead of the promotion of new concepts. Genuine protection of human dignity, life, health, standard of living and a suitable environment, etc., will provide humanity’s true security.

Philosophy and Progress, 2018

not availablePhilosophy and Progress, Vol#59-60-; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2016

Journal of Human Development, 2005

The label ‘human security’ has attracted much attention since the 1994 Human Development Report, but there are numerous conflicting definitions and agendas, and widespread scepticism. The Ogata–Sen Commission report Human Security Now has proposed a unified yet flexible definition and agenda. This paper specifies the Human Security Now concept as the intersection of: a concern with reasoned freedoms; a focus on basic needs; and a concern for stability as well as levels in key human development dimensions. Second, it specifies other elements of this human security discourse: a normative focus on individuals' lives and an insistence on basic rights for all; and an explanatory agenda that stresses the nexus between freedom from want and indignity and freedom from fear. Third, it clarifies where the human security discourse repeats the basic human needs conception, and where it adds and shows the consistency of the human security, human needs and human rights languages. Fourth, it specifies the types of intellectual ‘boundary work’ that the concept and discourse attempt: mobilizing attention and concern, connecting explanatory and normative agendas, and linking diverse intellectual and policy communities. Finally, it assesses human security as a boundary concept, including the particular label chosen, and diagnoses the threats as well as opportunities implicit in security language.

Springer eBooks, 2018

Human security denotes a human-denominated, as opposed to State, focus for security. It highlights the duality of individual, universaluniversalizable-human rights. This duality is central to the notion of human rights tied to human security. The idea of human security beyond borders is fundamentally an exercise in reimagining the traditionally Statebased loci of responsibility for those individual but also universal human rights. This chapter introduces the challenges of geopolitical shifts compounded by unprecedented impacts of climate change, migration, and pandemic (potential). It makes a case for rethinking human security of citizens and non-citizens alike-beyond borders. Keywords Human security • Human rights • Universal Human security denotes a human-denominated, as opposed to State, focus for security. It highlights the duality of individual, universal-universalizable-human rights. This duality is central to the notion of human rights tied to human security. While not in itself the focus of this small book, the idea of human security beyond borders is fundamentally an exercise in reimagining the traditionally State-based loci of responsibility for those individual but also universal human rights.

In K. O’Brien, A. L. St. Clair, B. Kristoffersen (eds.), Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, pp.23-46. , 2010

Although the language of 'human security' that became prominent in the 1990s has encountered criticism from many sides, it has continued to gain momentum. One encounters it frequently now in discussions of environment, migration, socioeconomic rights, culture, gender and more, not only of physical security. Werthes and Debiel propose that: 'human security provides a powerful "political leitmotif" for particular states and multilateral actors by fulfilling selected functions in the process of agendasetting, decision-making and implementation ' (2006:8). I suggest that in order to understand human security discourse and its spread this specification of actors and functions should be broadened. The relevant actors include more than states and multilateral agencies. What was primarily a language in United Nations circles is now far more. Like the sister idea of human rights, human security could be becoming an idiom that plays important roles in motivating and directing attention, and in problem recognition, diagnosis, evaluation and response.

Routledge Handbook of Human Security, 2013

2 One can draw various semiotic squares for a concept of 'human security'. Such a square shows a contrast along the top row, and contradictions along the diagonals. Different contrasts can be drawn: of 'human' with 'state' or 'national'; of 'security' with 'rights' or 'development' or 'growth', etc. 3 Berman (2007), for example, reduces the basic needs aspect mistakenly to basic material needs alone and also obscures the global-wide agenda in 'human-' language, such as seen in human rights law. 4 The chapter builds from and extends arguments presented in Gasper (2005, 2010).

Human Security and Japan’s Triple Disaster, 2014

"Rather than getting buried in debates over the narrow version of security—namely, freedom from fear—versus the broad version of freedom both from fear and want, this chapter takes a couple of steps into the task of redefining human security by treating security and risk as part of the contingent and negotiated condition of human living. In these terms, the liberal notion of “freedom from”, for all its importance, is exposed as a limited reduction of the richness of positive human security. Emphasizing what we want to escape “from” is to remain with the classical notion of negative freedom. Adding to this the concept of “freedom to”, that is, positive freedom, where people begin to debate the complex meaning of what it is to live with the tensions of both security and risk, is to take one step forward conceptually. Taking freedom out of its currently privileged singular place at the centre of the discussion is to take a further step forward into a more complex sense of human flourishing. The alternative negotiated themes of human security that need to be brought into contention include the relationships between freedom and obligation, between security and risk, between needs and limits and between authority and participation, amongst many others. In relation to the security/risk dialectic, for example, there can never be total security from the risk of natural disaster. To project such a scenario of “zero risk” as Tepco and the Japanese Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency did for the Fukushima reactors prior to their meltdown is political myth-making. To attempt to achieve such a practical impossibility is a folly and would be to begin annul the terms of a second tension between needs and limits. On the other hand, treating security/risk as simply a cost-benefit ratio is to rationalize human needs as if they can be turned into an economic calculus of life and death, suffering and compensation. "