Resilience, Critical Infrastructure, and Molecular Security

The Excess of 'Life' in Biopolitics1

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2283473
AutoresTom Lundborg (0000-0001-6496-3875, Swedish Institute of International Affairs, autor correspondente), Nick Vaughan-Williams (0000-0002-1689-5932, University of Warwick)
Ano2011
Volume5
Fascículo4
Páginas367-383
Data de publicação2011-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Political Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1749-5679 • E-ISSN: 1749-5687
EditoraOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1749-5687.2011.00140.x
OpenAlexW2101647519
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas44
Referências citadas32

This article investigates the political significance of the orientation of Western security relations around critical infrastructure (CI) and resilience planning. While the analysis is located in the International Political Sociology literature, it departs from recent biopolitical accounts of CIs and resilience. These accounts tend to present such apparatuses as closed, totalizing, and inevitably “successful” modes of governance. Rather, we argue that resilient CIs are open, vulnerable, and often absurd systems that continually falter, backfire, and often undermine themselves according to their own logic. By developing what we call a “molecular security” approach, we draw attention to the way in which life constantly evades capture. In this sense, we suggest, there is always an excess of “life” in biopolitics

Computer security · Critical infrastructure · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Sociology · Bacillus and Francisella bacterial research · Computer Science · Global Security and Public Health · Philosophy · Viral Infections and Outbreaks Research