Dyson College of Arts and Sciences
Issue link: http://dysoncollege.uberflip.com/i/128987
basic political science questions: Who does this conference represent? Whose interests and values are privileged? Who is silenced? Whose bodies are present? Whose bodies are missing from the room? I treated the conference chamber as an ethnographic field—a site where certain discourses, politics and practices of "security," "resilience," and "partnership" were socially constructed and enacted. My role in this project, as I perceived it, would be to observe, trace and describe the implicit politics of the room. The word "Summit" implies a meeting of leaders, representatives for particular constituencies or groups. But looking around the room on January 11, it was clear that some constituencies were represented more than others. Indeed, those sectors of society most affected by the humanitarian impact of disasters and conflict were largely absent. The conference program listed 17 men, five women; 18 people were white, three were persons of color; all appeared ablebodied. As I waited for the opening plenary to begin, I started counting the people in my section of the auditorium: 38 were men, mostly white; there were 13 women. Eight of the 22 listed speakers were from the corporate sector, five were employed in public sector emergency management and policing. All but one of the speakers was American. Despite speaking about the very human topic of "resilience," none of the speakers were psychologists, counselors, social workers, teachers, union leaders, anthropologists, or community organizers. Despite religious leaders being an important source of solace in times of crisis, there were no rabbis, priests, or imams. It would be hard to argue that this demographic profile had no impact on the conversation in the room. I heard little mention of the gendered impact of emergencies. Disasters outside of the United States were barely mentioned. As the speakers talked of "partnerships for resilience" I had to ask: Who is being partnered? Who is left out of the partnership? When we spoke of "Securing Our Future," who is included in the "Our"? Who is excluded from this "Future"? In the following I will argue that the Summit on Resilience was essentially a summit between two different, though complementary, discourses: Corporate Security and Homeland Security. These discourses diverge—one secures bodies (literal and corporate) with access to market power; the other secures a nostalgic notion of territorial sovereignty. The constant talk of "partnership" and "unity of effort" functioned to build linkages and harmonies between the tensions and contradictions implicit in bringing these two discourses together. Ultimately Corporate and Homeland Security were able to "sit down" together at this summit because they actually shared many key assumptions: a view of the world rooted in privileging certain populations, technophilia/ technocracy and the securitization (even militarization) of the boundary between the Self and the "threatening Other." Tom Ridge, as head of Homeland Security and current CEO of Ridge Global, demonstrates the way these two discourses can be embodied in one human being. However, these two discourses are not the only way to think and speak about security, disaster response, risk management, and resilience. I will outline an important alternative conception—Human Security—of responding to insecurity, risk, and disaster. In considering the importance of embodiment and positionality it would be amiss for me not to state up front my own social location and interests. I did my PhD under one of the primary advocates for Human Security and my analysis below is rooted in the discipline of political science, particularly its "constructivist" school. In thinking about security, I draw on reflections based in qualitative fieldwork conducted in the humanitarian and disarmament sectors of Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Haiti, and New York City. My understandings of the world are both informed and limited by my education in the US and Britain as well as my upbringing as a middle-class, white, Protestant, able-bodied, heterosexual male. 25