ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter offers a critical social science approach to contesting security. Links are clarified between the rearticulation of ‘disaster resilience’1 with that of societal security. It is not the purpose of this chapter to address the genealogy of societal security and resilience,2 but to offer a different approach to their contestation. The focus here is narrower. I will use ‘standards’ to reappraise the links between security and resilience, using professional quality standards as an area within which these concepts are contested. Of particular importance to this contestation is the critique of resilience through the lens of neoliberalisation – particularly in international relations, sociology and political geography. If one accepts that ‘neoliberalization [is] the reorganisation of societies through the widespread imposition of market relationships’ (Graham, 2010) then the critical appraisal of resilience and security should be embedded in these relationships. This allows for the conceptual contestation to be grounded in practical issues of governance across all forms of risk, hazard and threat – not limited to ‘realist’ conceptions of military security or to the critique of the Copenhagen School narrative as discussed in other chapters of this volume.
