Dyson College of Arts and Sciences
Issue link: http://dysoncollege.uberflip.com/i/128987
I do not wish to offer Human Security as a final word. As a concept it has problems. It is often universalizing and Eurocentric. It has implicit contradictions in the tensions between different kinds of rights and entitlements. Some have accused it of often being a back-door securitization of humanitarianism and social services. Rather, my intention is to open the discussion to additional conceptions and theories of security, to show that Corporate Security and Homeland Security are not the only possible discourses. f. Toward an Embodied Human Resilience Pace University has dedicated itself to educating for "Global Citizenship." This means gaining an awareness of the world beyond our immediate doorstep, solidarity with people facing insecurity no matter their race, gender, class, and nationality. In light of that commitment, as members of the Pace community, we must consider ways to talk about security, resilience and recovery that honors our location in post-9/11 Lower Manhattan, but also our place in the global context. I would like to argue that the discourses of Corporate Security and Homeland Security are inadequate to that task. They privilege those with wealth and the right passport over the vast majority of people. Instead, I believe we must construct institutions for security that take as a given the innate rights and entitlements that are a condition simply of being a human. But in doing so, we must recognize that conceptualizing and practicing security cannot be separated from the question of who is doing the securing and who is being secured. This requires an embodied notion of security—resilience with a human face. This will not be an easy task, for it requires us to think outside common discourses, to query divisions between "Us" and "Them," to risk difficult questions. It will require contemplation, reflection, and a willingness to be reflexive—thinking about our own role in creating insecurity for others. 30