Taming the Future: The Dispositif of Risk in the War on Terror

About the book: This book offers the first comprehensive and critical investigation of the specific modes of risk calculation that are emerging in the so-called War on Terror. Risk and the War on Terror offers an interdisciplinary set of contributions which debate and analyze both the empirical manifestations of risk in the War on Terror and their theoretical implications. From border controls and biometrics to financial targeting and policing practice, the imperative to deploy public and private data in order to ‘connect the dots’ of terrorism risk raises important questions for social scientists and practitioners alike. How are risk technologies redeployed from commercial, environmental and policing domains to the domain of the War on Terror? How can the invocation of risk in the War on Terror be understood conceptually? Do these moves embody transformations from sovereignty to governmentality; from discipline to risk; from geopolitics to biopolitics? What are the implications of such moves for the populations that come to be designated as ‘risky’ or ‘at risk’? Where are the gaps, ambiguities and potential resistances to these practices