No Go World

‘What makes a danger zone a danger zone is the lack of ability to withdraw from it.’ This line, spoken to Ruben Andersson by one of his interviewees, captures the visceral desire to evade risk, danger and insecurity at the heart of the practices detailed in his new book, No Go World: How Fear Is Redrawing Our Maps and Infecting Our Politics. How do we deal with a world in which distance is simultaneously collapsing but also more reasserted than ever, notably through risk management, security interventions and technologies of remote warfare? How did we get here and what are our ethical obligations in this context? No Go World is an ambitious and wide-ranging exploration of how risk, danger and fear are ‘remapping’ the world with dire ethical and practical consequences. In examining how ‘remote zones of insecurity are becoming central to our new world disorder’ (p. 3), the book seizes an ambitious remit and is a worthwhile read for a broad range of readers interested in security studies, insurance, risk, human geography and questions of social-science method itself. This book is not a classic ethnographic exploration of a single research site, but rather a story that zooms in and out from the local and the global. The book’s ‘anthropological appendix’ makes a case for Homo narrans—man as storyteller—and Andersson’s narrative approach weaves together stories of drone warfare, aid-agency compounds, encounters over tea under the Malian sun and military maps of global threats

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