Prof. George Rigakos has recently completed a new publication, released via Edinburgh University Press. The book, entitled Security/Capital A G
eneral Theory of Pacification, offers a radical social theory of the security-industrial complex, showing how pacification underpins the global economic system.
What is security, and what is its relationship to capitalism? Prof. Rigakos’ powerful 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, Prof. Rigakos builds a conceptual model of pacification based on practices of dispossession, exploitation and the fetish of security commodities.
Prof. 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.
This book is available for purchase at: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-security-capital.html
View more publications from our faculty: http://carleton.ca/law/publications/