Saving the Security State

In Saving the Security State Inderpal Grewal traces the changing relations between the US state and its citizens in an era she calls advanced neoliberalism. Marked by the decline of US geopolitical power, endless war, and increasing surveillance, advanced neoliberalism militarizes everyday life while producing the “exceptional citizens”—primarily white Christian men who reinforce the security state as they claim responsibility for protecting the country from racialized others. Under advanced neoliberalism, Grewal shows, others in the United States strive to become exceptional by participating in humanitarian projects that compensate for the security state's inability to provide for the welfare of its citizens. In her analyses of microfinance programs in the global South, security moms, the murders at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, and the post-9/11 crackdown on Muslim charities, Grewal exposes the fissures and contradictions at the heart of the US neoliberal empire and the centrality of race, gender, and religion to the securitized state.

"[Grewal] expertly demonstrates how, whether via militarism or humanitarianism, with both always racialized, the exceptional citizen labors to uphold US empire and the exceptionalism that justifies and rationalizes it." , "In this book, Grewal captures—through her multidisciplinary engagement with the key features of early twenty-first-century American political life—something important and troubling about the odd state of affairs in which we find ourselves here in the post-9/11 digital age. . . . This is a bold, brave, and forthright book.", "[This book] deserves to find its way onto the reading lists of university departments for a variety of subjects. . . a tour de force.", "This book is a carefully crafted volume, with most impressive documentation, a critical contribution that explains the pervasiveness of the 'security mom' and its complement, a fascist near-future.", "Saving the Security State is a fascinating, nuanced study of a topic that possesses an enormous amount of importance in contemporary society. ... Grewal’s focus on exceptional citizenship and American imperialisms at home and abroad make[s] this book exceptional."

Inderpal Grewal is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. She is the author of Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms and Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel, and coeditor of Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism, all also published by Duke University Press.