owards a Social Science Understanding of Human Security

Abstract

Threats and impediments to human security are part of the daily-lived experience of large numbers of people (especially in developing countries) but their vulnerability and precariousness are neither readily understood nor measurable. Action tends to be generic, imitative, and overly ambitious. If each country or region confronts a different context of human security and faces a set of specific challenges, how are we to proceed? This article argues that the field of human security needs to engage more fully with a range of sociological and anthropological concepts to maintain its relevance and gain greater analytical purchase on the multiple insecurities of the 21st Century. It reconsiders human security within conceptual discussions of ‘safety’ and ‘risk’ and their complex relationship to ‘trust’ and ‘uncertainty’. In particular, we bring into focus the utility and application of important theoretical and empirical developments in the understanding of marginality and by extension insecurity generated by such scholars as Zygmunt Bauman, Anthony Giddens, Mary Douglas, Olivia Harris, James C. Scott and Edward P. Thompson. Keywords: Human Security, Risk, Safety, Trust; Uncertainty