Security: cosmopolitan, human, critical?

Abstract

Tony Burke’s ambitious manifesto for ‘cosmopolitan security’ raises numerous issues that need attention by security scholars. The remilitarization of security matters in the aftermath of 9/11 has drastically narrowed the scope of the human security agenda and reinforced the case for critique of the taken for granted contextualizations of contemporary politics. Challenging militarized forms of security discourse ‘from above’, as Burke does, supports the case for rethinking human security while simultaneously emphasizing the need for critique as a key scholarly practice in critical security studies.

Keywords:

• cosmopolitan
• human security
• war
• geopolitics
• critique

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simon Dalby

Professor Simon Dalby, formerly at Carleton University, is now CIGI Chair in the Political Economy of Climate Change at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario. He is the author of Creating the Second Cold War (Pinter and Guilford, 1990), Environmental Security (University of Minnesota Press, 2002) and Security and Environmental Change (Polity, 2009).