"The contributors to this volume disassemble some familiar contemporary binaries to reveal the contradictions and surprising continuities that comprise them. The result is a powerful and convincing collection that integrates diverse phenomena(in)security, neoliberalism, citizenship, law, violencethat too often are understood in isolation. Historical, ethnographic, and comparative, the collection will appeal to scholars and students in a variety of disciplines, and is sure to become a standard reference in critical studies of security." - Daniel M. Goldstein,author of Outlawed: Between Security and Rights in a Bolivian City "This book explains many mysterious things: like the strange, increasingly violent permutations of the state as it responds to mafias, ethnicity, and & NGOs; and the puzzling emptying out and uncanny revivification of law, freedom, democracy, and identity. Basically, what is really going on in the world today. It is sobering, spirited, and necessary, connecting places and ideas well need to think with and beyond to get out of here alive." - Diane M. Nelson,author of Reckoning: The Ends of War in Guatemala "Cumulative decades of research come together in Rhetorics of Insecurity to provide readers with a wide-ranging collection of ethnographies, historical analyses, political theories, and discursive critiques. As many scholars who study neoliberalism will attest, there is an academic tendency to homogenize its effects, and the breadth of this text is one of its key strengths. The authors all provide compelling and unique perspectives, and each essay is well-written." (International Journal of Communications)