Conclusion

In the foreword to this volume, Tony McGrew generously suggested that the various contributions to this book mounted a constructive and cumulative defence of a ‘critical human security paradigm: one which seeks to recover and advance the progressive values of the human security project (in response to contemporary global insecurities) as a coherent, credible, and ethically superior alternative to current security orthodoxy’. The editors and contributors saw this assertion as a welcome recognition of new pathways of inquiry in the burgeoning field of critical security studies (CSS). However, the task of recovery is enormous enough; to radically shift the terrain of a hegemonic discourse on security could only be a fool’s promise. Deeply embedded in mentalities and practices, security studies have enjoyed a recursive character. As soon as potentially new openings appear on the horizon, the weight of habit and governmentalities of thought strike back. Against this backdrop, the more modest aim of this volume, therefore, has been twofold: to discern key features of a critical human security framework to incite the lineaments of alternative perspectives, and to link conceptual reworking of the human security paradigm (Part I) to a complex and heterodox empirical world (Part II). Our expectation, nonetheless, is to abet a possible breach from established modes of capture and analysis.