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Security Blurs makes an important contribution to anthropological work on security. It introduces the notion of “security blurs” to analyse manifestations of security that are visible and identifi able, yet constructed and made up of a myriad and overlapping set of actors, roles, motivations, values, practices, ideas, materialities and power dynamics in their inception and performance. The chapters address the entanglements and overlaps between a variety of state and non-state security providers, from the police and the military to vigilantes, community organisations and private security companies. The contributors offer rich ethnographic studies of everyday security practices across a range of cultural contexts and reveal the impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. This book presents a new anthropological approach to security by explicitly addressing the overlap and entanglement of the practices and discourses of state and non-state security providers, and the associated forms of cooperation and confl ict that permit an analysis of these actors’ activities as increasingly “blurred”.
This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the important field of urban anthropology. This is a critical area of study, as more than half of the world’s population now lives in cities and anthropological research is increasingly done in an urban context. Exploring contemporary anthropological approaches to the urban, the authors consider: How can we define urban anthropology? What are the main themes of twenty-first-century urban anthropological research? What are the possible future directions in the field? The chapters cover topics such as urban mobilities, place-making and public space, production and consumption, and politics and governance. These are illustrated by lively case s...
The Sensation of Security explores how private security guards are a permanent, conspicuous fixture of everyday life in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research with security laborers, managers, company owners, and elite global consultants, Erika Robb Larkins examines the provision of security in Rio from the perspective of security personnel, providing an analysis of the racialized logics that underpin the ongoing work of securing the city. Larkins shows how guards communicate a sensação de segurança (a sensation of security) to clients and customers who have the capital to pay for it. Cultivated through performances by security laborers, the sensation of security is a set of culturally shaped racialized and gendered impressions related to safety, order, well-being, and cleanliness. While the sensação de segurança indexes an outward-facing task of allaying fears of crime and maintaining order in elite spaces, it also refers to the emotional labor and embodied worlds that security workers navigate.
Mobility as the driving force of armed conflict
This Encyclopedia presents a comprehensive overview of the ever-evolving field of Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity across the Sciences. Authored by over 150 experts, it provides a vision of the Sciences in which scholars push boundaries and promote collaboration across diverse disciplines, scientific cultures and practices. This title contains one or more Open Access entries.
Much of the South African government’s response to crime—especially in Johannesburg—has been to rely increasingly on technology. This includes the widespread use of video cameras, Artificial Intelligence, machine-learning, and automated systems, effectively replacing human watchers with machine watchers. The aggregate effect of such steps is to determine who is, and isn’t, allowed to be in public spaces—essentially another way to continue segregation. In The Infrastructures of Security, author Martin J. Murray concentrates on not only the turn toward technological solutions to managing the risk of crime through digital (and software-based) surveillance and automated information sys...
Cape Town is a place between two oceans, between first and third worlds, between east and west. The majority of its citizens: a people between black and white, native and settler, African and European. How can we understand a city that is most assuredly in Africa, though not””seemingly””of it? By exploring this city’s tween-ness, we can begin to understand the soul of this town””haunted by its past, unsure of its future. A short book just over 100 pages, it allows readers to quickly identify the unique pulse of the city, its throbbing historical, social, cultural and political beat that underlies the transactions between all Capetonians. This is not a substitute for a traditional guidebook, but a perfect companion to one, filling in the intimate details that other books leave out.
Ethnography as Risky Business: Field Research in Violent and Sensitive Contexts offers a hands-on, critical appraisal of how to approach ethnographic fieldwork on socio-political conflict and collective violence, focusing on the global south. The volume’s contributions are all based on extensive firsthand qualitative social science research conducted in sensitive--and often hazardous--field settings. The contributors reflect on real-life methodological problems as well as the ethical and personal challenges such as the protection of participants, research data and the ‘ethnographic self’. In particular, the authors highlight how ‘risky ethnography’ requires careful maneuvering before, during, and after fieldwork on the basis of a ‘situated’ ethics, yet also point to the rewards of such an endeavor. If these methodological, ethical and personal risks are managed adequately, the yields in terms of generating a deep understanding of, and critical engagement with, conflict and violence may be substantial.
This volume offers insights from political anthropology on how to analyze and how to think about contemporary areas of internationalized political phenomena in a fresh manner. By drawing on a variety of cases like policing, budgeting, the role of monetary politics in everyday life, development agencies, and international organisations it shows the promise of an “extended experience” for the study of international politics, yet without glossing over the limits of such approaches. This book is an essential contribution to the discussion about ethnography in international relations and a bridge between disciplines.