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Risking lives: AIDS, security and three concepts of risk

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 17:35 authored by Stefan ElbeStefan Elbe
This article analyses the conjunctures of risk and security that have recently emerged in the securitization of HIV/AIDS. Although these partially corroborate Ulrich Beck's notion of risk society, important elements of the securitization of HIV/AIDS resist his understanding of risk as a 'danger of modernization'. The article therefore turns to Franois Ewald's alternative theorization of risk as a 'neologism of insurance', and shows that insurance is a risk-based security practice widely used to manage the welfare of populations. Such a biopolitical approach to risk is also valuable for analysing the securitization of HIV/AIDS, which, even though it is unfolding outside the domain of insurance, similarly draws upon multiple risk categories ('security risks', 'risk groups' and 'risk factors') in efforts to improve the collective health of populations. Analysed through a wider concept of risk as a 'biopolitical rationality', the conjuncture of risk and security in the securitization of HIV/AIDS thus emerges as a principal site where the institutions of sovereign power in international relations are being absorbed and integrated within a wider biopolitical economy of power.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Security Dialogue

ISSN

0967-0106

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Issue

2-3

Volume

39

Page range

177-198

Pages

22.0

Department affiliated with

  • International Relations Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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