Search results
This book addresses some of the neglected problems, people and vulnerabilities of the Asia-Pacific region. It talks about emancipation, human security, 'security politics', language and threat-construction. The book is divided into three sections: agents; strategies and contexts; and futures. The first section outlines a range of possible agents or actors potentially capable of redressing individual suffering and vulnerability in the region. It examines East Asian regional institutions and dynamics of regionalism as potential sources of 'progressive' security discourses and practices. There is focus on the progressive security potential of regional institutions and regionalism has become increasingly prominent in literature on security in the Asia-Pacific. Two common interpretations of the role of epistemic communities in the construction of security are contested: that they are either passive sources of governmental legitimacy, or autonomous agents with the capacity of constructing or creating state interests. The second section reviews strategies and contexts, outlining a range of different sites of insecurity in the region, the ways in which dominant security discourses and practices emerge, and the extent to which such discourses are contested in different contexts. Indonesian government's approach to minority groups and separatism, the issue of civil unrest and human rights abuses in Burma, and the Australian government's attitude towards refugees and asylum-seekers are discussed. The third section deals with security futures, specifically discussing the question of what alternative security discourses and practices might look like. Finally, the book outlines a feminist critical security discourse and examines its applicability to the Asia-Pacific region.
risks of large-scale violence in a crisis. Towards alternative security futures To what extent does US hegemony generally, and the pursuit of the ‘war on terror’ specifically, further peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region? There is little doubt that the US presence is desired by a range of states in the region (particularly those
tensions within the reconstructive approach (between the human security and emancipatory security discourses, for example) about what precisely alternative security futures should look like. This is applicable to the vexed question of agency and the particular possibility of human security being ‘coopted’ to serve elite purposes or ‘tacked on’ to traditional security practices, as Julie Gilson and Lorraine
material exchange into an absolutely immaterial place’ (Stäheli, 2013 : 68). In contemporary trading in deregulated synthetic or structured financial products, such as asset-backed securities, futures trading, hedging and sub-prime papers – some of the key tools in generating the new sources of capital underpinning economic growth, and a cornerstone of neoliberal financial models
, calling our attention to the need to think more carefully about what the region’s militaries actually do, and what role they can play in the realization of alternative security futures. Securing Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is often taken to be a realist region par excellence because actors remain preoccupied with the