Security/Capital: A General Theory of Pacification features a radical social theory of the security-industrial complex, showing how pacification underpins the global economic system. Its author, George Rigakos, is a Professor of the Political Economy of Policing in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University.
What is security, and what is its relationship to capitalism? George S. Rigakos’ explosive sociological treatise charts the rise of the security-industrial complex. Starting from a critical appraisal of “productive labour” in the works of Karl Marx and Adam Smith, the Professor of Law and Legal Studies builds a conceptual model of pacification based on practices of dispossession, exploitation and the fetish of security commodities.
Professor Rigakos argues that a defining characteristic of the global economic system is its ability to productively sell (in)security to those it makes insecure. Materially and ideologically, the security-industrial complex is the blast furnace of global capitalism, fuelling the perpetuation of the system while feeding relentlessly on the surpluses it has exacted.
In his acknowledgements for the book, Professor Rigakos praised his graduate students at Carleton: “I gain strength by being surrounded by some of the world’s most inquisitive and energetic graduate students at Carleton University. They make contributions like this book easier to embark upon because, although they would hardly admit it, they make the Department buzz with the excitement of critique and change,” he wrote.
Thursday, November 10, 2016 in Department of Law and Legal Studies, Faculty Publications
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