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This article analyses the conjunctures of risk and security that have recently emerged in the securitization of HIV/AIDS. Although these partially corroborate Ulrich Beck's notion of risk society, important elements of the securitization of HIV/AIDS resist his understanding of risk as a `danger of modernization'. The article therefore turns to François Ewald's alternative theorization of risk as a `neologism of insurance', and shows that insurance is a risk-based security practice widely used to manage the welfare of populations. Such a biopolitical approach to risk is also valuable for analysing the securitization of HIV/AIDS, which, even though it is unfolding outside the domain of insurance, similarly draws upon multiple risk categories (`security risks', `risk groups' and `risk factors') in efforts to improve the collective health of populations. Analysed through a wider concept of risk as a `biopolitical rationality', the conjuncture of risk and security in the securitization of HIV/AIDS thus emerges as a principal site where the institutions of sovereign power in international relations are being absorbed and integrated within a wider biopolitical economy of power.

A review essay on books by (1) Thomas Abraham, Twenty-First Century Plague: The Story of SARS (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U Press, 2005); (2) Mike Davis, The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu (New York & London: New Press, 2005); & (3) Eileen Stillwaggon, AIDS and the Ecology of Poverty (Oxford: Oxford U Press, 2006). There is growing international concern about the circulation of pathological viruses in the world economy. Reviewing recent scholarship on avian flu, SARS, and HIV/AIDS, this article argues that the contemporary world economy is generating not just an ecological footprint, but also an important epidemiological one. Illustrating the complex interdependencies that exist between economic and microbial systems of circulation, the article highlights the difficult challenges that states confront in trying to shield populations against these viruses within the current international order. Finally, the article also considers recent attempts to scale up international responses to these viruses, including their progressive securitization and the coming into force of a new set of international health regulations - opening up a new chapter in the bio-history of humanity.

This paper explains why the global HIV/AIDS pandemic should be considered in the debate on human security -- primarily because it is a direct threat to individual human security as well as a threat to society as a whole, increasing health care & welfare costs for afflicted families & depriving society of productive members. In addition, it can serve as a pertinent case study for the human security agenda because its impact can be so easily & visibly documented. This is especially important because so many still have a problem with a security agenda that involves more than just war & conflict. The politics of human security face the challenge of sovereignty & nonintervention in internal politics. The human security agenda contains very strong Western assumptions about how societies ought to deal with the issue of disease; how political power should be exercised more generally; & even about what it means to be human. Tables. J. Stanton

This article argues that the global AIDS pandemic is no longer solely a health issue, but also has emerging human, national, & international security dimensions that must be acknowledged by scholars & international policy-makers. In order to substantiate this argument, this article specifically analyses these three dimensions in greater detail, & outlines the broad policy implications that follow from such an analysis. It is important to recognize these security dimensions of the AIDS pandemic, the article concludes, (i) in order to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of the nature & extent of the contemporary pandemic; (ii) in order for the level of the international response to become commensurate with the extent of the global challenge posed by the AIDS pandemic; & (iii) because the security sector, as a high-risk group & vector of the virus, can make a responsible contribution to international efforts to reduce the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Adapted from the source document.

This article critically engages with recent efforts to frame the global AIDS pandemic as an international security issue. The securitization of HIV/AIDS is significant, the article argues, not just because it is a novel way of conceptualizing the global AIDS pandemic, but also because it marks an important contemporary site for the global dissemination of a biopolitical economy of power revolving around the government of 'life'. This biopolitical dimension to the securitization of AIDS brings into play a set of potentially racist and normalizing social practices, which, the article argues, international political actors should seek to avoid in their attempts to find appropriate and effective responses to the global AIDS pandemic. Ways of minimizing these dangers are explored in the conclusion of the article.

Die weltweite AIDS-Epidemie erschwert nicht nur die internationale Entwicklungspolitik. In vielen Entwicklungsländern droht sie sogar, die hart erkämpften Verbesserungen der letzten Jahrzehnte rückgängig zu machen. Dabei ist AIDS - trotz der besonders drastischen Auswirkungen in Afrika - kein afrikanisches Phänomen, sondern eine globale Pandemie. In den kommenden Jahren ist Entwicklungspolitik ohne die Einbeziehung der wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und sicherheitspolitischen Auswirkungen von HIV/AIDS undenkbar. Nur so kann ein circulus vitiosus verhindert werden: je mehr HIV/AIDS ein Land schwächt, desto anfälliger wird das wirtschaftliche und soziale Umfeld für eine weitere Intensivierung der Epidemie. (ICE2)