Gledhill, John. 2015. The new war on the poor. The production of insecurity in Latin America. Londres: Zed Books

Security is a topic often dominated by strategic military studies or think tanks with a decidedly positive stance on states’ function to provide order for businesses and citizens. but how is ‘se-curity’ defined, and who actually benefits from states’ measures to provide it? Who is targeted as a threat to this particular definition of security? anthropologist John gledhill in “The new War on the poor” provides an illuminating perspective on state measures towards parts of society which are defined as a threat to the dominant social order -- while on the other end of the spectrum are those parts of society actually enjoying citizen rights and sharing the state’s definition of security. gledhill’s cases are Mexico and brazil, two formally democratic countries illustrative for the en-tanglement of politics of power, militarized policing and economic policies which as a conjunction lead to what gledhill terms “the production of insecurity”.