ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to contribute to the development of a 'critical human security' perspective by arguing that the project of human security can only be furthered in a multicultural world through a sustained engagement with the post-secular. The 'civilising process' refers to the process whereby modern Europeans came to regard themselves as more 'civilised' than their ancestors and more 'developed' than other peoples. The agents of the contemporary 'civilising mission', however, are no longer European empires, private companies such as the East India Company or missionaries, but an 'international community' centred on the United Nations system dominated by powerful Western states. Critically reworked, however, human security has the potential to contest the hegemony of the discourse on national security. The chapter argues that cultural identity remains an important component of human security in our post-global age. For human security to aspire to 'universality', it needs to be both 'post-western' and 'post-secular'.
