Routledge Private Security Studies – serie

This book examines the self-representation and identity politics of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs).PMSCs have become increasingly important over the past few decades. While their boom is frequently explained in functional terms, such as their cost-efficiency and effectiveness, this book offers an alternative explanation based on an analysis of the online self-presentations of forty-two US- and UK-based companies. PMSCs are shaping how they are perceived and establishing themselves as acceptable and legitimate security actors by eclectically appropriating identities more commonly associated with the military, businesses and humanitarian actors. Depending on their audience and clients’ needs, they can be professional hero warriors, or promise turn-key security solutions based on their exceptional expertise, or, in a similar way to humanitarians, reassure those in need of relief and try to make the world a better place. Rather than being merely public relations, the self-referential assertions of PMSCs are political. Not only do they contribute to a normalization of private security and reinforce an already ongoing blurring of lines between the public and private sectors, they also change what we deem to be ‘security’ and a ‘security actor’.This book will be of much interest to students of private military companies, critical security studies, military studies, security studies and IR.

This book examines the debate over private security contractors, using historical and contemporary cases, including several non-Western examples.Since the end of the Cold War, security privatization has grown in its geographical outreach, breadth, and scope. This pervasive expansion of the private military and security market warrants a systematic investigation of commercial actors’ involvement in the variety of tasks associated with the provision of violence, ranging from combat to vessel protection and cybersecurity. Combining theoretical and empirical approaches, the essays in this volume provide a historical investigation into private force that extends beyond Europe and the United States.By focusing on recent developments, such as the extensive involvement of Russian mercenaries in Ukraine, new evidence from the Global South, and the added historical depth given to the study of commercial providers of warfare, this volume questions the endurance of norms like the mercenary taboo and the state monopoly of violence. In doing so, it sheds new light on the past, present, and future of private security.This book will be of much interest to students of private security studies, military studies, security studies, and international relations.

This book examines the normalization of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), and analyses US media discourse around the Nisour Square incident in Iraq as a pivotal case.States are increasingly relying on PMSCs to meet security needs. As a sign of ongoing normalization, these companies are now increasingly targeted by soft law or self-regulation. Rejecting the common claim that ‘mercenaries have always been with us’, this book sets out to analyse the underlying conditions that have allowed PMSCs to emerge in their uniquely contemporary incarnation. Divided into two parts, this book develops a novel poststructural framework of analy-sis to articulate social, political, and affective conditions that enabled PMSCs to prevail despite controversy. It draws on and operationalizes the Essex School’s logics-based approach, while developing it further with corpus linguistics, and ap-plies this framework to a large corpus of American mainstream media articles. The volume contributes to efforts aiming to overcome the alleged ‘methodological deficit’ of discourse analysis, while highlighting the importance of making uncon-sciously held truths visible.This book will be of interest to students of private security companies, military studies, critical security studies, and International Relations.

This book explains how security is organized from the local to the national level in post-war Sierra Leone, and how external actors attempted to shape the field through security sector reform.Security sector reform became an important and deeply political instrument to establish peace in Sierra Leone as war drew to an end in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Through historical and ethnographic perspectives, the book explores how practices of security sector reform have both shaped and been shaped by practices and discourses of security provision from the national to the local level in post-war Sierra Leone. It critiques how the notion of hybridity has been applied in peace and security studies and cultural studies, and thereby provides an innovative perspective on IR, and the study of interventions. The book is the first to take the debate on security in Sierra Leone beyond a focus on conflict and peacebuilding, to explore everyday policing and order-making in rural areas of the country. Based on fieldwork between 2005 and 2018, it includes 200+ interviews with key players in Sierra Leone from the National Security Coordinator and Inspector-General of Police in Freetown to traditional leaders and miners in Peyima, a small town on the border with Guinea. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security, anthropology, African politics and IR in general.

This book examines the self-representation and identity politics of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs).PMSCs have become increasingly important over the past few decades. While their boom is frequently explained in functional terms, such as their cost-efficiency and effectiveness, this book offers an alternative explanation based on an analysis of the online self-presentations of forty-two US- and UK-based companies. PMSCs are shaping how they are perceived and establishing themselves as acceptable and legitimate security actors by eclectically appropriating identities more commonly associated with the military, businesses and humanitarian actors. Depending on their audience and clients’ needs, they can be professional hero warriors, or promise turn-key security solutions based on their exceptional expertise, or, in a similar way to humanitarians, reassure those in need of relief and try to make the world a better place. Rather than being merely public relations, the self-referential assertions of PMSCs are political. Not only do they contribute to a normalization of private security and reinforce an already ongoing blurring of lines between the public and private sectors, they also change what we deem to be ‘security’ and a ‘security actor’.This book will be of much interest to students of private military companies, critical security studies, military studies, security studies and IR.