Terror, Insecurity and Liberty: Illiberal Practices of Liberal Regimes after 9/11 / Edition 1

by Didier Bigo, Anastassia Tsoukala

Overview

This edited volume questions the widespread resort to illiberal security practices by contemporary liberal regimes since 9/11, and argues that counter-terrorism is embedded into the very logic of the fields of politics and security.

Although recent debate surrounding civil rights and liberties in post-9/11 Europe has focused on the forms, provisions and legal consequences of security-led policies, this volume takes an inter-disciplinary approach to explore how these policies have come to generate illiberal practices. The book argues that policies implemented in the name of protection and national security have had a strong effect on civil liberties, human rights and social cohesion - in particular, but not only, since 9/11. The book undertakes detailed sociological enquiries concerning security agencies, and analyses public discourses on the definition of the terrorist threat. In doing so, it aims to show that the current reframing of civil rights and liberties is in part a result of the very functioning of both the political and the security fields, in that it is embedded in a broad array of domestic and transnational political, administrative and bureaucratic stakes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415466288
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/13/2008
Series:	Routledge Studies in Liberty and Security
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Didier Bigo is Professor of International Relations at Sciences-Po Paris, and visiting Professor at King's College London.

Anastassia Tsoukala is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at University Paris XI, and Research fellow at University Paris V-Sorbonne.

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors, Acknowledgements, 1 Understanding (in)security, 2 Globalized (in)security: the field and the ban-opticon, 3 Defining the terrorist threat in the post-September 11 era, 4 ‘Hidden in plain sight’: intelligence, exception and suspicion after 11 September 2001, 5 Military activities within national boundaries: the French case, 6 Military interventions and the concept of the political: bringing the political back into the interactions between external forces and local societies, Select bibliography, Index