This article examines the manner in which the human security discourse enables a dual exercise of sovereign power and biopower. Drawing from the work of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, it argues that human security contributes to this dual exercise by conceptualizing a form of life rendered amenable to biopolitical technologies and rationalities while simultaneously defining the conditions of exceptionality that assist in sovereign power's ability to authorize international interventions meant to secure human life. This frame of reference is then mobilized to read the human security discourse within the broader developments of the concept of security from the immediate postwar period to the post-9/11 moment. It is argued that the human security discourse informs the current biopolitical networks of world order and often works in conjunction with -rather than against -the global exercise of sovereign power made evident by the 'war on terror'.

Critical security studies is an established interest that brings together a variety of disciplines and theoretical approaches to bear on the ubiquitous deployment of security discourses and practices in the post-9/11 world. This article maps scholars working in critical security studies in Canada and addresses the potential of collaborative spaces for research of this community, particularly in contradistinction to the Paris and Copenhagen schools, as set out by the c.a.s.e. collective. Important issue clusters include: a concern with the post-colonial, particularly First Nations; environmental and ecological security, a network of issues surrounding the border, refugees, immigration, and multiculturalism; and human security, global governance, and intervention.

No abstract

Many thanks to Javier Duran and the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry for allowing Ben Muller the time and space to see this project to fruition. 2 Ben Muller brought the different authors together and edited the collective article. Muller, Benjamin et al.