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In a time of climate breakdown, everyday security is shaped as much by ecological degradation as by familiar forms of disorder. Drawing on two research encounters with a northern English town, set 25 years apart, this book reveals how local concerns about chronic environmental damage blur the boundaries between criminal and noncriminal harms. It proposes an ecological rethinking of security—one that recognises how worries about sustainability, place and quality of life increasingly intertwine.
Bringing environmental and green criminology into closer dialogue, the book shows how austerity and climate anxieties converge, and how communities’ hopes for habitable futures demand new ways of understanding—and acting upon—everyday disorder.
'In an era of fast outputs, this book showcases the rewards of sustained research in a single place—returning 25 years later to Macclesfield to uncover how both the town and our wider world have changed. Ian Loader, Richard Sparks, Evi Girling and Ben Bradford reveal how town residents' concerns about disorder now reflect wider environmental degradations in ways they could not have anticipated in their earlier study. Drawing on rich ethnography and analytical re-description of key themes, they demonstrate that security and liveability are inseparable from the health of our socio-natural environment. This book issues a vital call to ‘ecologise security’—a major contribution to criminology and an essential guide for anyone thinking about care, responsibility, and action in a climate-changed world.' Insa Lee Koch, University of Sankt Gallen
'This exceptional book explores a question at the forefront of criminological thinking - the linkages between macro and micro harms. With care, subtlety and nuance the authors explore how shifting harmscapes are understood, engaged, and governed in everyday urban contexts.' Clifford Shearing, Universities of Cape Town, Oxford and Toronto, and the Australian National University
Ian Loader is Professor of Criminology at the University of Oxford.
Richard Sparks is Emeritus Professor of Criminology at the University of Edinburgh.
Evi Girling is Research Associate at the University of Oxford.
Ben Bradford is Professor of Global City Policing at University College London.
Introduction: Local Security, Planetary Futures
1. A Brief History of Ecology (And Crime)
2. New Ecologies of Security
3. Socio-Natural Harmscapes
4. Erosion of Public Things
5. Driving Disorder
6. Ecological Governance of Place
Conclusion: On Earthly Security