Security: cosmopolitan, human, critical?

Abstract

Tony Burke’s ambitious manifesto for ‘cosmopolitan security’ raises numerous issues that need attention by security scholars. The remilitarization of security matters in the aftermath of 9/11 has drastically narrowed the scope of the human security agenda and reinforced the case for critique of the taken for granted contextualizations of contemporary politics. Challenging militarized forms of security discourse ‘from above’, as Burke does, supports the case for rethinking human security while simultaneously emphasizing the need for critique as a key scholarly practice in critical security studies.