Introduction: emancipation and power in human security. -- 'We the peoples' : contending discourses of security in human rights theory and practice. -- Development of the human security field: a critical examination. -- Post-colonial hybridity and the return of human security. -- Securitizing 'bare life': critical perspectives on human security discourse. -- Human security, biopoverty and the possibility for emancipation. -- Institutionalised and co-opted: why human security has lost its way. -- The limits of emancipation in the human security framework. -- Rethinking global discourses of security. -- Human security and the securing of human life: tracing global soverign and biopolitical rule. -- Problematizing life under biopower: a Foucauldian versus an Agambenite critique of human security. -- Rethinking human security: history, economy, governmentality. -- Human security: sovereignty and disorder. -- Inhuman security.

1. Human rights
2. Human security
3. International relations
4. Security
5. International