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For tjue ar siden pavirket utgivelsen av rapporten 'New Dimensions of Security' fra FNs utvikhngsprogram, UNDP, en allerede gryende debatt om sikkerhet. I denne artikkelen undersokes dagens status for human security som et komplekst og mangfoldig kunnskapsfelt. I fire steg diskuterer jeg begrepets fleksibilitet, vektleggingen av subjektivitet og kontekstuelle og helhetlige forstaelser av sikkerhet. Videre droftes human security som del av en etisk utenrikspolitikk og militaere intervensjoner i tiden etter den kalde krigen. Human security har som kunnskapsfelt en iboende spenning mellom analyser av usikkerhet og sosial organisering pa lokalt niva og human security som retorisk instrument for a legitimere fred/krigforing. A undersoke og forsta den symbolske makten i det vage og abstrakte begrepet human security, bade slik det framstar og brukes i konkrete sammenhenger, kan vaere en vei til kritiske analyser i dette kunnskapsfeltet Twenty years ago the release of the UNDP report 'New Dimensions of Security' stimulated what was already a sprawling debate on security. This article explores the status of human security today as a complex and diverse field of knowledge. In four steps I discuss the flexibility of the concept, the emphasis on subjectivity, contextual and holistic understandings of security as well as how human security is part of an ethical and interventionist foreign policy in the post-cold-war era. I argue that human security as a field of knowledge is characterized by tension. A key tension is between an analytical approach to insecurities and social organization on the local level and analyses of human security as a rhetorical tool legitimizing peace-/war-making. Exploring the symbolic power in the vague and abstract notion of human security, how it is represented and employed in concrete contexts, is one approach to critical analysis in this field. Adapted from the source document.

Embodying a state vision of how civil society ought to function and be designed by the authorities, Public Chambers in Russia have been criticized as means of state control. This state dominance is the starting point in this article, which asks what room to manoeuvre a regional Public Chamber has. Drawing upon fieldwork this article examines how members and local observers of the Public Chamber give meaning to this activity. The analysis assesses the role of state dominance, discussion of routines and responses to local demands, and concludes that these incremental developments form civil society in Russia. [Copyright The Regents of the University of California; published by Elsevier Ltd.]

In ongoing discussions surrounding the issue of human security, the security of individuals has become entangled in conceptual debates that are preoccupied with notions of appropriate variables, measurements and issue areas. This article suggests and illustrates a basis for human security research that is distinct from such objectivist empiricism. A case study of crisis centres in northwest Russia is used to demonstrate that human security is not only a matter for objectified generalizations, but also a question of practices. Feminist security theory and the work of Pierre Bourdieu are used to address methodological concerns raised during fieldwork on crisis centres in northwest Russia. Three dimensions are discussed: the conceptualization of security for the specific-actor approach of crisis centres, the ways in which relevant empirical data are established, and the subsequent interpretation of such data. The discussion shows, first, that rethinking security for crisis centres reveals contingencies in the research process that are relevant to the establishment of human security knowledge; second, the practice of human security research reflects the fragility in the understanding and production of security in everyday contexts. Accordingly, when we examine human security, our analysis ought to be directed at security as an ambiguous practice. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright PRIO, www.prio.no]

The general role of symbolic power in contributing to the legitimacy of security has been acknowledged, and this article seeks, more specifically, to advance the understanding of gendered power dynamics and (in)security. It demonstrates how, through their first decade of existence, nonstate crisis centers in Northwest Russia contributed to security but also to the (unintentional) marginalization of women's security. Their emphasis on victims acting on their own behalf, inducing them to becoming acting subjects, is a misrecognition of the effect of symbolic power in this field. The refusal by the Russian (patriarchal) legislature of anti-domestic violence law, combined with the hesitancy of public institutions' personnel (doctors, police, judges) to provide support for women, gives the local crisis centers, which lacked financial resources, little choice about which intervention strategies to prioritize while emphasizing women's personal responsibility. Adapted from the source document.

"Im Mittelpunkt des Beitrags steht die Rebellenbewegung UNITA (Uniao Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola). Sie kontrollierte seit Mitte der 1970er Jahre den Südosten Angolas und seit Ende der 1980er Jahre den Diamantenhandel. Darüber hinaus baute sie in den von ihr kontrollierten Territorien ein weitgehend funktionsfähiges Gewaltmonopol, einen umfassenden Verwaltungsapparat sowie ein soziales Sicherungssystem auf. Dies rechtfertigt die Klassifizierung ihrer Herrschaftsform als quasi-staatliche Gewaltordnung. Der Bestand dieser Gewaltordnung blieb indes von wirtschaftlichen Einflussgrößen abhängig. Im einleitenden Kapitel des Beitrags wird die traditionelle Herrschaftsstruktur der Ovimbundu-Gemeinschaften dargestellt, deren Vergemeinschaftungsformen in den Quasi-Staat der UNITA eingebunden wurden und ihn maßgeblich legitimierten. Der zweite Teil widmet sich dem Aufbau und der Organisation des über lange Jahre äußerst stabilen Quasi-Staates. Abschließend wird die Erosion der Herrschaft der UNITA ab Mitte der 1990er Jahre analysiert." (Autorenreferat)

The Arctic Council is the most important institution for governing beyond the nation-states in the far north. It makes no legally binding decisions, but it influences policy in the Arctic with the basic knowledge that its working groups provide. It is especially successful in monitoring the environment. However, in the field of health management, which the council has addressed in recent years, the limits of scientific political consulting can be seen. In the end, the council has to make political decisions in order to endure as an influential institution in the Arctic. Adapted from the source document.

"Alle in diesem Sammelband untersuchten Gewaltordnungen lassen sich als Ausdruck und Resultat krisenhafter oder gescheiterter Staatskonsolidierung verstehen. Daraus lässt sich jedoch nicht der generelle Bedeutungsverlust des Staates oder gar das Ende der Staatlichkeit überhaupt ableiten, wie unter anderem in der Diskussion um die ‚neuen Kriege' hervorgehoben wird. Die untersuchten Beispiele zeigen, dass sich in den Kriegen der Gegenwart nicht nur Auflösungserscheinungen des staatlichen Gewaltmonopols, sondern auch Prozesse der (Re-)Monopolisierung der Gewalt beobachten lassen. Das vorgestellte begriffliche Instrumentarium ermöglicht es, die Stabilisierung, Dynamik und Auflösung gesellschaftlicher Machtverhältnisse jenseits oder sogar in Konkurrenz zu den staatlichen Ordnungsvorstellungen zu untersuchen. Die von Gewaltakteuren in zeitgenössischen Kriegen etablierten Ordnungsformen lassen sich mit Blick auf den Grad ihrer Institutionalisierung als Warlordfigurationen oder Quasi-Staat typologisieren, die Tendenzen zur Entwicklung von nachhaltigen Strukturen aufweisen." (Autorenreferat)

In the debate on human security, the leading question for many is 'where do we go from here?' Through this article, the authors contribute to the discussion by exploring both the extent to which gender approaches have been relevant to the human security debate thus far and how they can offer some directions forward. They argue that gender approaches deliver more credence and substance to a wider security concept, but also enable a theoretical conceptualization more reflective of security concerns that emanate from the 'bottom up'. The authors therefore incorporate gender theory to develop human security as an epistemological perspective to security studies. Gender theory claims that security must be linked to empowerment of the individual, as well as to the capabilities to create positive environments of security. They employ the tool of resistance as one crucial example of human agency in security. Practices of resistance, in the latter's various empirical forms, are present in all social contexts. Such a perspective on security directs attention to the practices of agents and provides a basis for exploring contextually dependent insecurities and securities.

This paper examines the activities of non-state actors in war in Somalia and Angola. Arguing that prolonged wars are characterised by the emergence of social orders of violence beyond the state, our analytical focus is on how actors establish and sustain these orders. A core influence is the insight from research on war economies that war is not equal to the breakdown of societal order, but represents an alternative form of social order. We therefore examine the economic activities of insurgents in regard to their embeddedness in social and political spheres. The central question in this paper is how economic, political and symbolic aspects interact and determine as well as transform social orders of violence. With the examples of Somalia and Angola, two rather distinct cases of non-state orders of violence are examined. It is argued that these orders represent forms of authority with fundamental structural aspects in common. We suggest that these orders can be systematised on a continuum between two poles of institutionalisation of authority beyond the state: a warlord system and a quasi-state system of violence.

Rapid urbanisation in Somalia, as in many other war-torn countries, is driven by in-migration of displaced people who are often amassed in camps. Although such camps become institutionalised sites of exclusion where 'bare life' is generated and disposed, they are also characterised by socially messy and continuously evolving relations of space, power, violence and displacement. The article draws on fieldwork with displaced people in Somali cities to analyse claims to property and (often violent) competition to uphold them in contestation for sovereignty. Comparing two cities, Mogadishu and Bosaaso, we show how a broad range of international and local actors, including displaced people themselves, negotiate (urban) property and establish relations that guide and foster political authority, while rendering the lives and livelihoods of displaced people precarious and insecure. In property, politics and the economy intersect, and property relations are therefore subject to struggles for both power and profit. We underscore how sovereign power produces spaces of indistinction, but emphasise that property as an analytical category contributes to understandings of sovereignty. Furthermore, propertying as social practice draws attention to the way sovereignty emerges and is connected to the market. This enables the differentiations of forms of sovereignty and draws attention to how it is negotiated, openly challenged or silently undermined.