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The world has entered an unprecedented period of uncertainty and political instability. Faced with the challenge of knowing and acting within such a world, the spread of computers and connectivity, and the arrival of new digital sense-making tools are widely celebrated as helpful. But is this really the case or have we lost more than gained in the digital revolution? In Post-Humanitarianism: Governing Precarity in the Digital World renowned scholar of development, security and global governance Mark Duffield offers an alternative interpretation. He contends that connectivity embodies new forms of behavioural incorporation, cognitive subordination and automated management that are themselves inseparable from the emergence of precarity as a global phenomenon. Rather than reconstruct from disasters, survivors are encouraged to build 'resilience' - to adapt and make do with what remains. As an outcome of an economy now in permanent emergency, humanitarian disasters function as a site for trialling and anticipating the modes of social automation and remote management that govern this precarity and increasingly embrace us all. Empirically rich and conceptually innovative, Post Humanitarianism critically explores how increasing connectivity is inseparable from growing societal polarisation, anger and political push-back. It will be essential reading for students of international and social critique, together with anyone concerned about our deepening alienation from the world

La seguridad humana es comúnmente entendida como la priorización de la seguridad de las personas, especialmente su bienestar social, seguridad y calidad de vida, por encima de la seguridad de los estados. Sin embargo, lejos de examinar la seguridad humana como una condición medible o específica, el objetivo de este artículo es indagar cómo la seguridad humana —como tecnología de gobernanza— determina la forma en que las poblaciones que viven en los territorios de estados ineficaces son comprendidas, diferenciadas y validadas por las instituciones de cooperación provenientes de los países eficaces. Para conseguirlo, primero definirá el término desarrollo desde una perspectiva biopolítica, es decir, como una tecnología de seguridad orientada a promover la vida de poblaciones que —comparadas con los habitantes de sociedades desarrolladas— están en esencia "no aseguradas". Para este artículo es de especial interés examinar cómo la seguridad humana, entendida como una relación de gobernanza, ha continuado evolucionando de la mano de la guerra contra el terrorismo. Hacia finales de la década de los noventa, la seguridad humana condensaba una visión que integraba las redes de ayuda existentes en un sistema internacional de intervención coordinado, capaz de complementar los esfuerzos de los estados ineficaces para brindar seguridad a sus ciudadanos y a sus economías. Comparada con esta noción más universalista de seguridad humana, en la que desarrollo y seguridad se entendían como "diferentes pero iguales", la guerra contra el terrorismo ha profundizado la interconexión entre desarrollo y seguridad. En particular, está reenfocando los recursos de cooperación hacia aquellas subpoblaciones, regiones y asuntos que se consideran un riesgo para la seguridad nacional de los estados desarrollados. Mientras algunas organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG) se preocupan por las crecientes amenazas a su independencia, para otras han surgido nuevas posibilidades y oportunidades para la interacción estatal/no-estatal.

Ponencia presentada en el I Congreso Internacional Sobre Desarrollo Humano, Palacio Municipal de Congresos, Madrid, 14 a 16 de noviembre de 2006 ; Durante los últimos años, un número de ideas relacionadas con el trabajo en "entornos difíciles", o que implican países descritos como "malos actores" o "estados frágiles" han entrado en el discurso político. Tratan de describir el reto del desarrollo en una época de inestabilidad global y de extendido fallo estatal. Estas ideas son similares en contenido y aquí nos referimos a ellas como el estado frágil, o el discurso sobre el estado frágil. El pensamiento de los gobiernos donantes sobre la reconstrucción de los estados frágiles se entiende como la punta de lanza de la política actual. De cualquier forma, además de explorar éste discurso, éste trabajo se basa en las suposiciones y disposiciones desarrolladas dentro de la cobertura del imperialismo liberal, en concreto, la práctica colonial del gobierno indirecto o administración nativa. En vez de ser esencialmente nuevo, el discurso sobre el estado frágil es más bien una reinscripción contemporánea de enfoques anteriores sobre el problema del espacio no gobernado. Dado el fallo histórico de semejantes tecnologías para revertir el rechazo al tutelaje occidental, en una época de guerra indefinida y de creciente insurgencia global, es tan urgente como relevante un examen crítico de esta arqueología ; Over the last several years, a number of ideas relating to working in "difficult environments", or engaging countries described as "poor performers" or "fragile states" have entered policy discourse. They attempt to describe the challenge for development at a time of global instability and the widespread occurrence of state failure. In content, these ideas are similar and are referred to here as the fragile state, or fragile state discourse. Donor government thinking on reconstructing fragile states is regarded as the cutting-edge of current policy. Besides exploring this discourse however, this paper draws out its reliance on assumptions and dispositions developed within the fold of liberal imperialism; in particular the colonial practice of indirect rule or Native Administration. Rather than being essentially new, fragile state discourse is more a contemporary re-inscription of earlier approaches to the problem of ungoverned space. Given the historic failure of such technologies to reverse the rejection of Western tutelage, at a time of indefinite war and deepening global insurgency, a critical examination of this archaeology is both pressing and relevant.

Utilizando la gestión de desastre humanitario como ejemplo, este artículo analiza con una mirada crítica algunos cambios recientes que se han producido en la naturaleza de la gobernanza de la seguridad. Sobre todo, la desaparición de la participación directa en favor del desarrollo de técnicas de detección y gestión a distancia. La rápida evolución de las tecnologías de la información y el análisis de datos para la gestión de los desastres ha proporcionado un medio para conseguir esta distancia de forma digital. A pesar de la arrogancia y las reivindicaciones positivas que rodean este cambio, el artículo argumentará que tales formas de gestión tienen consecuencias preocupantes. Por ejemplo, la creciente dependencia de la detección y la gestión a distancia son una parte esencial del creciente dominio de la idea de la resiliencia. Ya no buscamos controlar o protegernos de los desastres. Ahora, el objetivo es adaptarse a ellos. A través de ejemplos extraídos de los programas de transferencia de dinero o el reciente plan de Google y Facebook de conectar a la red a las poblaciones del Sur global donde el acceso es complicado, el documento concluye con un argumento crítico que defiende que esta nueva tecnología tiene la capacidad de perpetuar la desigualdad en lugar de promover la libertad o el desarrollo.

Using Sudan as a case study, the focus of this essay is the changing nature of fieldwork in the Global South. More specifically, it concerns the methodological shifts in how the South has been approached as an object of knowledge in the contemporary period. Drawing on the author's own varying engagement with Sudan since December 1973, it was prompted by a return visit in January 2014 to what is now the small town of Maiurno, near Sennar, almost 40 years to the day of beginning his PhD fieldwork there. In doing justice to this privileged experience, it became evident that writing an account of the changes and reunions with old friends was not enough. It wouldn't justify the journey, so to speak, that they have all made. Neither would it bring out the essentially anomalous character of the return at a time when such journeys are becoming more difficult. This results from a hidden complicity between the shift toward research risk avoidance in UK universities and, in this case, the restrictive practices of the Sudanese state. The essay explores several stages in the move away from ethnographic fieldwork being an art of being in the world to a growing remoteness from the world and the compensatory emergence of remote methodologies and the simulation of digital alternatives. At the same time, it traces a shift from the politics of solidarity to the neoliberal marketisation of the sub-prime tele-economic conditions encountered in the Global South.

Despite the widespread perception of danger, the aid industry continues to expand within challenging political environments. As a way of reducing risk, this expansion has been accompanied by the 'bunkerization' of international aid workers. While this development is largely viewed by the industry as an unfortunate response to a decline in external security, a more holistic approach is used here to explain the consequent paradox of liberal interventionism: an expansion that is simultaneously a remoteness of international aid workers from the societies in which they operate. The demise of modernist legal, moral and political constraints, together with a decline in the political patronage that aid agencies enjoy, has been important in shaping the new risk terrain. At the same time, these changes embody a profound change in the way contingency is approached. Earlier modernist forms of protection have been replaced by postmodernist calls for resilience and the acceptance of risk as an opportunity for enterprise and reinvention. Within the aid industry, however, field-security training represents a countervailing attempt to govern aid workers through anxiety. Resilience, in the form of 'care of the self' techniques, becomes a therapeutic response to the fears induced in this way. Viewed from this perspective, apart from reducing risk, the bunker has important therapeutic functions in a world that aid workers no longer understand or feel safe in.

As an object of study, the defensive bunkering of the aid industry, as reflected in the spread of fortied aid compounds and increasing risk aversion among aid workers, helps make visible something that is usually hidden or occluded; that is, the aid industry as a sovereign actor. What is noteworthy about aids material assemblages, at least with respect to their power effects, is that aid policy tends to operate as if such effects do not exist. In helping to give material form to the aid industry, this article is a modest contribution to the growing interest in the spatial attributes and effects of international intervention and assistance. Its point of entry is the recent emphasis on field-security training among aid agencies in response to the perception that aid work is becoming increasingly dangerous. Adapted from the source document.