Homeland Security Cultures: Enhancing Values While Fostering Resilience

Homeland Security Cultures: Enhancing Values While Fostering Resilience explores the role that culture plays in the study and practice of homeland security in an all-hazards, whole-community, and all-of-government scope. It does so by analyzing and discussing strategic, organizational, operational, and social cultures in the U.S. Homeland Security Enterprise, as well as from an international perspective. The focus is on how knowledge and interpretation, normative values, common symbols, and/or action repertories inform the evolution of the homeland security mission space and the accomplishment of homeland security functions. Contributions also address institutional changes designed to foster a more coherent common homeland security culture.

This textbook will make a contribution to the evolution of homeland security as a policy area and a field of study by offering actionable insight as well as critical thinking from scholars and practitioners on how cultural aspects matter in balancing security against liberty, in managing complex risks, in enhancing collaboration across sectors, and in explaining how a resilient nation can be fostered while enhancing liberal and democratic values.

Alexander Siedschlag is Professor of Homeland Security at Penn State Harrisburg School of Public Affairs, in a joint appointment as Professor of Public Health Sciences at the Hershey College of Medicine and serves as Chair of Penn State Homeland Security Programs.

Andrea Jerkovic is Acting Director of the CEUSS | Center for European Security Studies, Austria.