Insecurity

by Richard Grusin (editor)

Investigating insecurity as the predominant logic of life in the present moment

Challenging several key concepts of the twenty-first century, including precarity, securitization, and resilience, this collection explores the concept of insecurity as a predominant logic governing recent cultural, economic, political, and social life in the West. The essays illuminate how attempts to make human and nonhuman systems secure and resilient end up having the opposite effect, making insecurity the default state of life today.

Unique in its wide disciplinary breadth and variety of topics and methodological approaches—from intellectual history and cultural critique to case studies, qualitative ethnography, and personal narrative—Insecurity is written predominantly from the viewpoint of the United States. The contributors’ analyses include the securitization of nongovernmental aid to Palestine, Bangladeshi climate refugees, and the privatization of U.S. military forces; the history of the concept of insecurity and the securitization of finance; racialized urban development in Augusta, Georgia; Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and the consequences of the Marie Kondo method; and the intricate politics of sexual harassment in the U.S. academy.

Neel Ahuja, U of California, Santa Cruz; Aneesh Aneesh, U of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Lisa Bhungalia, Kent State U; Jennifer Doyle, U of California, Riverside; Annie McClanahan, U of California, Irvine; Andrea Miller, Florida Atlantic U; Mark Neocleous, Brunel U London; A. Naomi Paik, U of Illinois, Chicago; Maureen Ryan, U of South Carolina; Saskia Sassen, Columbia U.

271 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 5, 2022

About the author

Richard Grusin is Professor of English at University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. His research fields include: media, cinema, history of representation, as well as the environmental, cultural, and American studies.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2022, Professor of English Richard Grusin at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee published a collection of articles entitled Insecurity for the Center for the 21st Century Studies (Grusin 245). I read the book on Kindle. The collection is a collection of articles that were presented at a conference on the topic of ““insecurity”” at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in 2019 (Grusin vii). The collection contains nine articles, not including the “introduction” (Grusin vii-xix), that are connected by the topic of ““insecurity”” in some way. The collection includes a vast variety of topics which includes the topic of ““insecurity”” in some way. Several of the articles have pictures. Grusin defines the theme of the collection as “the chapters assembled in this book explore the concept of insecurity in relation to some of the governing logics of economics, political, and social life in the West at the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century” (Grusin ix). All of the articles include the concept of security as well. The contributors to the collection come from the fields of political economy, gender studies, sociology, human geography, English, media studies, Asian studies, and law. The collection entitled Insecurity edited by Richard Grusin is interesting.