RAI RESEARCH SEMINAR

SEMINAR SERIES AT THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

Anthropology and Security Studies

Dr Christopher Farrands, Nottingham Trent University, and Dr Giovanni Ercolani, Universidad de Murcia

Wednesday 9 April at 5.30 pm

Aim of the Seminar is to develop the argument of the need of an anthropological approach to security studies. For this purpose, the seminar:
1.    Looks at the limits that the orthodox understanding of security imposed, as a hegemonic reading/grammar/protocol of interpretation, on what insecurity and security was during the Cold War;
2.    Analysis the emergence of Critical Security Studies and of new international security environments which developed after the fall of the Berlin Wall (new threats, new insecurity, new security-securitization discourses, and new/old actors);
3.    Then following the evolution of recent military (NATO, American, etc) interventions, and looking at their results, argues the need to work on the establishment of an anthropology of security (therefore inspired by the principles of human security, and positive peace) which is not an ethnography of conflict.

Therefore:
1.    Dr. Giovanni Ercolani (University of Murcia, Spain) will talk about (i) ‘Considerations on Anthropology and Critical Security Studies in a Globalized Context: The NATO Civil-Military Co-operation (CIMIC) Doctrine as an Anthropological Space’; and (ii) on his personal fieldwork experience with an Italian CIMIC Military Team in Italy and in Lebanon;
2.    Prof. Chris Farrands (Nottingham Trent University, UK) will talk on ‘Visual Ethnographies, Conflict and Security’.
3.    The recent book ‘Anthropology and Security Studies’ (Murcia: Editum, 2013), edited by Fina Anton Hurtado and Giovanni Ercolani, will be presented.

This event is free, but tickets must be booked.  To book tickets please go to https://ercolani.eventbrite.co.uk/

Dr Ercolani has recently published a book on this topic, Anthropology and Security Studies.  More information on the book can be found here.