Dyson College of Arts and Sciences
Issue link: http://dysoncollege.uberflip.com/i/128987
Dyson College of Arts and Sciences Security for Whom? Putting a Human Face on Resilience Critical Response Paper Following the Pace University 2012 "Summit on Resilience: Securing Our Future through Public-Private Partnerships" Matthew Bolton Department of Political Science, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Pace University, New York, NY a. Whose Body Is Secured? The human body occupied an ambiguous role in the discourse of the speakers at the January 2012 Pace University "Summit on Resilience: Securing Our Future through Public-Private Partnerships," a conference on security, emergency management, and post-disaster recovery. Keynote speaker and former US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge seemed particularly fond of anthropomorphic and bodily metaphors. We must manage the threat of "Mother Nature," he said. America is a nation where "we've never thrown up our hands" or given up in the face of adversity. He spoke of the "backbone of the nation," of supply chains being "lifeblood." He suggested that the answer to disaster management coordination problems was "partnership, partnership, partnership" and wanted the public sector to "sit down with the private sector." Regarding the concept of a common emergency communications channel he said he "just want[ed] the bloody system" to get up and running. However, when asked about the expansion of the Department of Homeland Security, Ridge said the government needed "no more people, more technology." Despite his language being rich with human metaphors, he deployed these mostly in description of nonhuman or abstract nouns—nature, the nation, supply chains, the private sector, a communications channel. But ultimately, for Ridge, building institutions of security and resilience is not a job for "more people" but rather, of nonhuman systems. His technophilia lies within a long tradition within the American security establishment that places its faith in security through technology—a disembodied or "unmanned" security. There has been a growing recognition in the social sciences in the last 30 years that observation and analysis of human society can never stand outside of human experience. The scholar is socially located in a network of identities: place, culture, politics, class, social status, gender, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity. All of these factors impact how we perceive our Self and Others we research. Social science is never disembodied, no matter how much it may try to mask this fact. Research is gathered, thought about, discussed, written, and taught by human bodies in relationship with other human bodies and the environment in which they are physically located. Similarly, security and risk management involves delegating to one group of human bodies the task of administering the safety of other human bodies, privileging some over others. Therefore, when asked to attend the Summit on Resilience and write this critical response, I decided to approach it from some 24