Overview
Most research in the field of attachment is on the experiences of attachment, separation and loss, and their developmental course and effects. This book widens our vision to the public domain, to consider the ways in which social institutions, culture and social policy may diminish our ability to make and maintain secure attachments. It argues that collective human security depends in part on the quality of attachments amongst individuals, a quality which, in turn, is conditioned by the structures of public life. The book invites its readers to reflect on those social processes that put our security at risk and to explore the prospects for enabling change.
Part One introduces readers to the basic principles of Attachment Theory and their value in helping us understand why secure Attachments are so important to the health of persons and communities. In Part Two, contributors reflect upon some of the complex connections between public life and the quality of our Attachments. Part Three considers strategies for enabling change so that our culture, social policies and institutional practices can come to embrace the principle that Attachments and Affection Bonds matter for human security.
Synopsis
Most research in the field of attachment is on the experiences of attachment, separation and loss, and their developmental course and effects. This book widens our vision to the public domain, to consider the ways in which social institutions, culture and social policy may diminish our ability to make and maintain secure attachments. It argues that collective human security depends in part on the quality of attachments amongst individuals, a quality which, in turn, is conditioned by the structures of public life. The book invites its readers to reflect on those social processes that put our security at risk and to explore the prospects for enabling change.
Part One introduces readers to the basic principles of Attachment Theory and their value in helping us understand why secure Attachments are so important to the health of persons and communities. In Part Two, contributors reflect upon some of the complex connections between public life and the quality of our Attachments. Part Three considers strategies for enabling change so that our culture, social policies and institutional practices can come to embrace the principle that Attachments and Affection Bonds matter for human security.
Editorials
From the Publisher
"Risking Human Security is an important book. Written for both a professional and wide lay audience, this volume seeks to bring the issues of attachment into the public domain. What makes it unique, is its exploration of how policy decisions, culture and politics can undermine–or support–the conditions on which human survival and security depend. Using case studies written by scholars and by activists with anthropological and psychological insights, Green demonstrates that our abilities to bond with others can be weakened or shattered by more than what is popularly understood as ‘trauma’. Contributors demonstrate that like all structural violence, consumer and industrial cultures can be as destructive of attachments as are wars and forced migration. Embracing, and going beyond, traditional academic analysis, Risking Human Security provides corrective and necessarily subversive lenses to make the human condition more visible. Green’s book makes a valuable contribution to all who are working to alleviate human suffering and to create a more life-affirming world.””This is a book we have been waiting for. Within a framework of proposing that threats to attachment are threats to human security, Marci Green has assembled a team of contributors analysing the risks to secure attachments that arise from both the extraordinary and routine conditions of everyday life. Contributions from clinicians, researchers, political activists and educators enable Green’s book to explore the direct effects of political conflict, forced migration, and the aftermath of environmental disaster. In addition the book makes valuable contributions to our understanding of the indirect damage done to attachments by our social arrangements, by considering the organisation of our workplaces, the effects of aggressive marketing practice on children’s capacity to empathise with others, and the disastrous undermining of communities caused by the U.S. 'War on Drugs' and imprisonment practices. This is a fine book and essential reading.”