ABSTRACT
Most accounts of human security still refer to the publication of the 1994 UNDP Human Development report as the origin of this seemingly new, innovative and radical form of security thinking (e.g. Fierke 2007: 144; Kerr 2007: 92; Kaldor 2007: 182; Thomas 2000: 7). In the mid-1990s, academic discussions revolved around the ‘broadening’ and ‘deepening’ of security and the addition of new referent objects (see, among others, Walt 1991; Booth 1991; Krause and Williams 1996), while political debates at the time often centred around a broad and a narrow understanding of human security. The perception of analysts that the old national security thinking had become anachronistic was essentially mirrored by policymakers who complemented their security lexicon beyond earlier catch phrases of deterrence, military capabilities and national security. Unsurprisingly, there is now little contention that we are living in an era (of an inflationary use) of ‘new’ forms of security – be it human, environmental, economic, energy, networked or comprehensive, to name but the most prominent. Yet, a satisfactory answer as to how we have come there in the first place or how we could move beyond the level of
semantics in the analysis of human security have been scarce until recently (see e.g. Shani et al. 2007; Chandler 2008; Hynek 2008a).
