Uninvited Guests: Tourists and Environment on Siberut

Wetensch. publicatieInstitute of Environmental Science

Towards a Social Science Understanding of Human Security

Threats and impediments to human security are part of the daily-lived experience of large numbers of people (especially in developing countries) but their vulnerability and precariousness are neither readily understood nor measurable. Action tends to be generic, imitative, and overly ambitious. If each country or region confronts a different context of human security and faces a set of specific challenges, how are we to proceed? This article argues that the field of human security needs to engage more fully with a range of sociological and anthropological concepts to maintain its relevance and gain greater analytical purchase on the multiple insecurities of the 21st Century. It reconsiders human security within conceptual discussions of ‘safety’ and ‘risk’ and their complex relationship to ‘trust’ and ‘uncertainty’. In particular, we bring into focus the utility and application of important theoretical and empirical developments in the understanding of marginality and by extension insecurity generated by such scholars as Zygmunt Bauman, Anthony Giddens, Mary Douglas, Olivia Harris, James C. Scott and Edward P. Thompson

Conclusion

As mentioned at the beginning of this book, the ways vulnerability and precariousness play out across Southeast Asia are not readily understood or measurable. However, by focusing on the human and relational dimensions of insecurities in Southeast Asia, the reader has been given an interior and localized perspective on a manifold issue. The volume’s contributions highlighted the multiple ways in which human insecurities are very much part of the daily lived experience of many who call the region home; inhabiting its many spaces and places. This is an unsettling human moiré patterned by a range of often contradictory, unacknowledged and overlapping local, national, regional and global interests, forces and factors. If we are to expand the scope of “security” towards addressing the day-to-day inequities and lived insecurities experienced by many people across Southeast Asia then gaining a better understanding of the complex nexus of interrelated conditioning factors and interests underlying them is an important step. The composite of perspectives and approaches voiced in this volume has given purchase to that aim. There is still a long way to go in bridging the gap between our aspirations and the practicalities of addressing human insecurities in Southeast Asia. It is going to be an arduous and difficult task but not insurmountable

Human Insecurities in Southeast Asia

This book is a collection of work by scholars currently pursuing research on human security and insecurities in Southeast Asia. It deals with a set of ‘insecurities’ that is not readily understood or measurable. As such, it conceptually locates the threats and impediments to ‘human security’ within relationships of risk, uncertainty, safety and trust. At the same time, it presents a wide variety of investigations and approaches from both localized and regional perspectives. By focusing on the human and relational dimensions of insecurities in Southeast Asia it highlights the ways in which vulnerable and precarious circumstances (human insecurities) are part of daily life for large numbers of people in Southeast Asia and are mainly beyond their immediate control. Many of the situations people experience in Southeast Asia represent the real outcomes of a range of largely unacknowledged socio-cultural-economic transformations interlinked by local, national, regional and global forces, factors and interests. Woven from experience and observations of life at various sites in Southeast Asia, the contributions in this volume give an internal and critical perspective to a complex and manifold issue. They draw attention to a variety of the less-than-obvious threats to human security and show how perplexing those threats can be. All of which underscores the significance of multidisciplinary approaches in rethinking and responding to the complex array of conditioning factors and interests underlying human insecurities in Southeast Asia

Experimentally Validated Hemodynamics Simulations of Mechanical Heart Valves in Three Dimensions

10.1007/s13239-011-0077-zCardiovascular Engineering and Technology3188-10