Glocalized Security

What forces drive violent conflicts, and whose interests are protected by military involvement? In those conflicts, how do domestic factors fuse with external dynamics, and what issues spell the difference between successful and failed intervention?

Enter Glocalized Security―a concept that argues that this fusion of domestic and external matters produces new war dynamics which require both substantial domestic reforms and realignment of external interests to achieve sustainable peace. In this edited collection, contributors use this concept to examine grievances and interests in and around war-torn countries. Combining a variety of disciplines, from sociology and political science to peace studies and public policy and administration, these case studies draw from over three decades of international military interventions around the world, including Afghanistan, Turkey, Somalia, Iraq, Nigeria, and Nepal. Analyzing the intersectional relationship of the local and global, Glocalized Security provides new insights into the problems of international security and why international military interventions often fail to ensure peace and security in conflict zones where these factors have morphed into terrorism warfare or zones of national interest among major world and regional powers.

By focusing on ethnicity, religion, poverty, governance, and the other most common motivators of violent conflicts, Glocalized Security provides a crucial conceptual basis for understanding international relations in the twenty-first century.

Abu Bakarr Bah is Presidential Research Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Northern Illinois University. He is author (with Nikolas Emmanuel) of International Statebuilding in West Africa: Civil Wars and New Humanitarianism in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte D'Ivoire. He has several edited books, which include International Security and Peacebuilding: Africa, the Middle East, and Europe and African Security: Local Issues and Global Connections. He is founding editor of ACPR: African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review and the founding director of IRPIA: Institute for Research and Policy Integration in Africa.