Freedom vs Necessity in International Relations Human-Centred Approaches to Security and Development

by Chandler, David

• ISBN13: 9781780324838
• ISBN10: 1780324839
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2013-04-16
• Publisher: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Summary

For the last two decades nearly all analysis of insecurity, conflict or development has stressed the need to "empower" or "capacity-build" local individuals or communities. This ground-breaking book presents a radical challenge to such approaches, arguing that solutions to the world's problems are not understood within external structures of economic, political and social relations, but instead with individuals and groups often the most marginal and powerless. This has gone hand-in-hand with a shift from state-based to society-based understandings of the world. Chandler provocatively argues that this has limited available transformative possibilities, and to achieve real change - both at a local and a global level requires a radical re-think in Western thought.

Author Biography

David Chandler is Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster. He is author of several books and edits the Journal of Statebuilding and Intervention.

Table of Contents

"In this important and provocative book, packed with deep insights, Chandler illustrates how global problems are turned into problems of human subjectivity. This book will set the vital question of the discursive shift from the external to the internal world at the top of the agenda." - Professor Jonathan Joseph, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, UK