In/security in Colombia

Writing political identities in the Democratic Security Policy

By (author) Josefina A. Echavarría

Hardback - £85.00

Publication date:

01 July 2010

Length of book:

278 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

234x156mm

ISBN-13: 9780719079856

Based on geo- and biopolitical analyses, this book reconsiders how security policies and practices legitimate state and non-state violence in the Colombian conflict.
Using the case study of the official Democratic Security Policy (DSP), Echavarría examines how security discourses write the political identities of state, self and others. She claims that the DSP delimits politics, the political, and the imaginaries of peace and war through conditioning the possibilities for identity formation.

In/security in Colombia offers an innovative application of a large theoretical framework on the performative character of security discourses and furthers a nuanced understanding of the security problematique in a postcolonial setting. This wide-reaching study will benefit students, scholars and policy-makers in the fields of security, peace and conflict, and Latin American issues.

Echavarría presents an important analysis of the discourse / consequences associated with the democratic security policy..."

"... it succeeds in showing how the Uribe administration used its power to establish new boundaries for Colombian security policy.