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The Palgrave Handbook of International Development pp 243–257Cite as

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Security Privatisation, the State, and Development in the Global South

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Abstract

This chapter discusses the impact of security privatisation for our understanding of the state and its role in development. Focussing on commercial private security companies (PSCs), it shows their rapid expansion across the developing world. Instead of seeing the growth of private security as an automatic indication of state weakness, I suggest that security privatisation has led to the emergence of global security assemblages. Within such assemblages new security structures and practices emerge, reconfiguring the power of the state and the traditional distinctions between public and private, global and local. The chapter concludes that the effects of global security assemblages for development cannot be theorised a priori and might be contradictory and multifaceted; they might strengthen the ability of the state to spatialise its authority, while simultaneously making its coercive capacities less directly violent. They might maintain existing divisions and exclusions, while simultaneously open up space and influence for norms and values that argue for greater equality, inclusion, and development.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I thus exclude direct references to two important forms of private security activities: direct involvement in war and conflict as well as more informal, non-state policing by groups often referred to as vigilantes or militias. Many of the observations and arguments are nevertheless relevant to these types of private security, and no clear-cut distinction can be drawn between the more mundane guarding of ‘life and assets’ and security provision in conflict situations.

  2. 2.

    The term ‘assemblage’ has a series of complex provenances in social theory; for an exploration, see Acuto and Curtis (2014).

  3. 3.

    For an instructive example, see Human Security for an Urban Century, p. 26, co-sponsored by the Canadian Consortium on Human Security and the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada

    Rita Abrahamsen

Authors
  1. Rita Abrahamsen
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Politics, University of York, Heslington, United Kingdom

    Jean Grugel

  2. Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

    Daniel Hammett

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Abrahamsen, R. (2016). Security Privatisation, the State, and Development in the Global South. In: Grugel, J., Hammett, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of International Development. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-42724-3_14

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