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The United Nations Development Programme
had already (1994) invoked the concept of
‘human security’ as a universally applicable
notion that, crucially, shifts the referent of secur-
ity studies from nation-states to peoples. This
move focuses on the prevention and amelior-
ation of a wide range ofrisksandhazards
facing people in all human societies within
what Beck calls a globalrisk society(Beck,
1998; see also Theranian, 1999).
These proposals are important, but they
also collide with a recent stream of work on
biopower, if they are understood to imply a
transition from geopolitical regimes that take
territory as their object to biopolitical
regimes that takepopulationas their object.
Inspired by Michel Foucault’s lectures in
the late 1970s (translated as Foucault, 2007
[2004]),researchers are now asking urgent
questions about the biophysical and medica-
lized vocabularies in which security is being re-
visioned, and the ways in which governmental
technologies of contingency are entering into
the very construction of life itself (Dillon,
2008). In one sense, these more recent inter-
ventions reactivate and radicalize a stream of
work on the ways in which hazards, risks and
fear intersect in the constitution of everyday
life. In major metropolitan centres in the
globalnorthand in the globalsouth, the
policehave become increasingly militarized,
and so has architecture – to such a degree,
indeed, that there is now a critical online ‘field
guide to military urbanism’ (Subtopia, at
http://subtopia. blogspot.com: see also
Caldeira, 1999; Low, 2004). The ‘securitiza-
tion’ ofeveryday lifehas become so com-
monplace – so ‘normal’ – that one of the
most popular, and certainly one of the edgiest,
magazines on the role of technology in con-
temporary culture includes regular blogs on
national security (Danger Room: http://blog.
wired.com/defense) and on privacy, security,
politics and crime (Threat Level: http://blog.
wired.com/27bstroke6/). This brings us full
circle, to a point at which strategic sites in cities
are targeted by terrorist groups and these
threats are used in turn to legitimate wide-
spread efforts to securitize cities through install-
ing checkpoints, defensive urban and landscape
designs, and systems of intensified electronic
surveillance (Graham, 2004a; Gray and Wyly,
2007; Katz, 2007). sg/dgSuggested reading
Bialasiewicz, Campbell, Elden, Graham, Jeffrey
and Williams (2007); Dalby (2002). See also
Subtopia, at http://subtopia.blogspot.com.segregation The phenomenon of segrega-
tion is said to occur when two or more groups
occupy different spaces within the samecity,
regionor evenstate. The types of patterns
identified as segregated go back to the begin-
nings of concentrated human settlement. Even
ancient cities, for example, were usually div-
ided internally into quarters associated with
particular groups, and also characterized by a
sharp separation between urban (inside the
wall) and suburban (outside) groups. Human
settlements have always been socially stratified
and those designated as ‘others’ – whether
based upon religion, culture, economic status
or any other social division – have been rele-
gated to specific, usually environmentally
poor, places (see also other/otherness).
That is, social marginalization is almost always
associated with spatial segregation.
The degree of segregation, or separation
between groups, varies. A group may be
more prevalent in one area than another: for
example, people of a particular religion
may have a tendency to live near their place
of worship but still live among people of
other faiths, so that the degree of segregation
is low. At the other end of the spectrum,
groups may be pushed into separate areas
and have theirmobilitycurtailed, as in the
Jewishghettoscreated by the Nazis during
the holocaust or the segregated districts
imposed by theapartheidregime in South
Africa. The process is not merely historical:
at the end of 2006, for example, several local
authorities in Italy decided to designate separ-
ate spaces for Roma (Gypsy) people, complete
with fences and gates regulating movement in
and out.
These examples highlight another crucial
element: segregation can arise from discrimin-
atory forces outside a group and/or from
the social organization and predilections of
the group itself. The internal side of this
dynamic was first theorized by thechicago
schoolof urban sociologists, as they tried
to understand the nature of immigrant settle-
ment in early-twentieth-century cities in the
USA. They believed that newcomers gravi-
tated intoenclavesspecific to their cultural
group and that these segregated areas helped
people to come to terms with their new soci-
ety. Gradually, as individuals adapted to
American culture by learning English,
upgrading their education and obtaining better
jobs, they would move to multi-ethnic (non-
segregated) neighbourhoods, typically in sub-
urbs (see suburb/anization). Subsequent
critics charged that the Chicago SchoolGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_S Final Proof page 673 1.4.2009 3:23pmSEGREGATION