Futureproof Security Aesthetics and the Management of Life

"This provocative book reframes the issue of security, considering it at the intersection of aesthetics and politics. It opens new possibilities of critique and of understanding, using ethnographies to expose several dimensions of our everydayness that normalize fear, risk, violence, and the invisibilization of growing inequalities. It will become mandatory reading for all interested in criticizing contemporary formations of power and the ways in which violence and security are lived and felt in the everyday." - Teresa P. R. Caldeira, author of (City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo) "This volume offers a critical analysis of 'security' as a mode of power and form of governance by examining its aesthetic dimensions. The authors explore the institutions and discourses that sell protection from almost every aspect of everyday life. By focusing on the political and social aesthetics of how security claims and threats control human lives, they argue that it is these aesthetic manipulations that provide an affective infrastructure and set of practices that manage human life. An important addition to the anthropology of security, Futureproof provides a provocative glimpse into the future." - Setha Low, coeditor of (Spaces of Security: Ethnographies of Securityscapes, Surveillance, and Control) "The development of the concept of security as an aesthetic and sensory experience is an interesting line of research, and the broad sample of cases evaluated in Futureproof was well chosen. This is a reference text I would recommend for security practitioners as well as advanced students and scholars of security and strategic theories. Far from the typical security text, there are philosophical elements and advanced concepts that lend more to a scholar's eye, but this text will prove educational for anyone with an interest in the staging and portrayal of security." - Courteney J. O'Connor (LSE Review of Books) "This is a worthy and relevant contribution to security studies, a field which will likely become even more prominent in the post-COVID-19 world." - R. P. Lorenzo (Choice)