Securing 'the Homeland': Critical Infrastructure, Risk and (In)Security / Edition 1

by Myriam Anna Dunn, Kristian Søby Kristensen

Overview

This edited volume uses a ‘constructivist/reflexive’ approach to address critical infrastructure protection (CIP), a central political practice associated with national security.

The politics of CIP, and the construction of the threat they are meant to counter, effectively establish a powerful discursive connection between that the traditional and normal conditions for day-to-day politics and the exceptional dynamics of national security. Combining political theory and empirical case studies, this volume addresses key issues related to protection and the governance of insecurity in the contemporary world. The contributors track the transformation and evolution of critical infrastructures (and closely related issues of homeland security) into a security problem, and analyze how practices associated with CIP constitute, and are an expression of, changing notions of security and insecurity. The book explores aspects of ‘securitisation’ as well as at practices, audiences, and contexts that enable and constrain the production of the specific form of governmentality that CIP exemplifies. It also explores the rationalities at play, the effects of these security practices, and the implications for our understanding of security and politics today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415441094
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/31/2007
Series:	CSS Studies in Security and International Relations
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Myriam Dunn Cavelty is lecturer and head of the new risks research unit at the Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich.

Kristian Søby Kristensen is a PhD candidate working with the Research Unit on Defence and Security at the Danish Institute for International Studies.

Table of Contents

Foreword Ole Wæver . Introduction: Securing the Homeland: Critical Infrastructure, Risk, and (In)Security Myriam Dunn Cavelty and Kristian Søby Kristensen Part 1: Origins, Conceptions, and the Public-Private Rationale The Vulnerability of Vital Systems: How ‘Critical Infrastructure’ Became a Security Problem Stephen J. Collier and Andrew Lakoff. Like a Phoenix from the Ashes: The Reinvention of Critical Infrastructure Protection as Distributed Security Myriam Dunn Cavelty. ‘The Absolute Protection of our Citizens’: Critical Infrastructure Protection and the Practice of Security Kristian Søby Kristensen. Critical Infrastructures and Network Pathologies: The Semiotics and Biopolitics of a Heteropolar World Order James Der Derian and Jesse Finkelstein. Part 2: Terrorism and the Politics of Protecting the Homeland Media, Fear, and the Hyperreal: The Construction of Cyberterrorism as the Ultimate Threat to Critical Infrastructures Maura Conway. Homeland Security Through Traceability: Technologies of Control as Critical Infrastructures Philippe Bonditti. The Gendered Narratives of Homeland Security: Anarchy at the Front Door Makes Home a Haven Elgin M. Brunner. Conclusion: The Biopolitics of Critical Infrastructure Protection Julian Reid

Editorial Reviews

'[This book] provides a thorough, engaging and much overdue account of the key issues at the intersection between critical infrastructure and the field of Security Studies.' Lene Hansen, University of Copenhagen

From the Publisher