AustLit

'‘Security’ is a multifarious notion. Its connotations bounce off in so many directions. Its implicit meanings and our anxiety about it bubble up from so many layers and recesses in our personal and social being. In the present context of nasty little wars around the globe and in the face of climate change, ‘security’ is now adumbrated in a new academic discipline—‘human security’; security is rapidly being technologised as ‘securitisation’ for states, like Israel and America, with unruly populaces; and everywhere there is a sense of ontological destabilisation—via, on the one hand, terror brought home to the West and, on the other, via capitalism’s own core engine of ‘creative destruction’, at the heart of ‘growth’ and ‘innovation’ and leading us who knows exactly where.'    (Editorial introduction)