Paul Amar examines social militarization in Egypt and Brazil [VIDEO]

As part of the Arab Reform and Democracy Program's speaker series, UC Santa Barbara Political Scientist Paul Amar discussed his book The Security Archipelago, winner of the 2014 Charles Taylor Book Award of the American Political Science Association. The book provides an alternative historical and theoretical framing of the refashioning of free-market states and the rise of humanitarian security regimes in the Global South by examining the pivotal, trendsetting cases of Brazil and Egypt. Addressing gaps in the study of neoliberalism and biopolitics, Amar describes how coercive security operations and cultural rescue campaigns confronting waves of resistance have appropriated progressive, antimarket discourses around morality, sexuality, and labor. Homing in on Cairo and Rio de Janeiro, Amar reveals the innovative resistances and unexpected alliances that have coalesced in new polities emerging from the Arab Spring and South America's Pink Tide. These have generated a shared modern governance model that he terms the "human-security state."