Private security, political economy and the policing of race

In this article, we hypothesize that the punitive and disciplinary dimensions of the private security industry reflect and propagate a peculiar and practically alarming story about human security: that it is possible to pursue a form of individualized political peace nearly apart from broader projects for social and economic peace. We reflect upon the impacts for different 'racial' groups of the continued currency of this story for human security. We probe these developing hypotheses through the empirical case of South Africa. Toward framing this form of analysis, we elaborate upon controversies concerning the combination of Foucauldian analyses with political economic and realist critical race approaches, to yield critical sociologies of political economy.