Lock Peter

This author's articles

• Economic profiles of general border security and their opportunity costs

  14 May 2009
  This paper focuses on the economic implications of border security policies within the European Union and the-Schengen-area in particular. As countless national and international agencies claim to take part in the execution of these policies, which are handled with high priority in the political arena, accounting for the direct and indirect costs becomes a rather complex exercise. Not least because the execution of controls is often externalised and thus may actually shift the location of the physical and legal borders.

• Crime and violence: Global economic parameters

  22 May 2006
  Violence, crime and social fragmentation, the latter increasingly taking forms of social apartheid, are pervasively associated with the current form of economic globalisation. The public good „security« progressively mutates into a commodity, supplied by the private sector in the form of services or as physical commodification of security. The suppliers can be regular enterprises or informal, illegal or criminal actors. Often members of the state security apparatus offer their services to paying clients, which amounts to an informal self-privatisation, while still wearing their uniform representing the state. The commodification is epitomized by the global spread of gated communities and similar schemes of social separateness. Here in South Africa there is no need to elaborate this further, because these phenomena have become a constitutive element of daily life and determine the social topography, as did apartheid before.

• Ökonomie der « neuen Kriege » : Kalte Friedenskonsolidierung durch Kriminalisierung?

  7. Februar 2006
  Current wars represent a blend of different forms of violence, many of which can also be observed in societies not at war. Economic constraints of statehood under the current regime of global economic regulation have made the traditional distinction between the military and the police obsolete. Modernisation of economic activities in combination with rapid urbanisation, often leading to ungovernable mega-cities pose a new dramatic constraint to armed conflict. As a result certain forms of armed violence are transformed and render the distinction between war and not-in-war increasingly me

• Kriegsökonomien und Schatttenglobalisierung

  7. Februar 2006
  The hypothesis underlying the debate about « new wars » that there are fundamental differences between countries classified as « in war » and those « not in war » is questioned throughout the paper. The economic conditions and constraints war fighting parties face in the current environment do not disappear after a peace is negotiated. This explains that as rule to outcome of internationally supervised elections lend legitimacy to former warlords and other thugs. The continuation of their violence-based clientelistic power remains the only source for individual security.

• Anti-terrorism and Effects on Freedom of Movement- Assessing the Concept of Progress in the Fight against Terrorism

  20 July 2005
  The main fault weakening the idea to fight against terrorism rests with the very definition of what constitutes terrorism. Though some consensus appears feasible of what constitutes a terrorist act, it is impossible to unambiguously identify who is a terrorist or describe the boundaries of «terrorism». Though once being upgraded to «war», anti-terrorism becomes an open-ended activity because it is intrinsically impossible to define criteria, which would unequivocally permit to declare victory and put an end to this war.

• Notiz zur Rolle privater Militärfirmen in Gewaltsamen Konflikten

  20. Juni 2005
  The current debate is limited in scope. A list of problems that should be addressed in this debate is offered. Global social change produces demand for legal ans illegal security services. PMCs are not a new phenomenon., but they become most visible in times of military surplus labour. So far in most cases the text payer foots most bills. A more rigorous cost-benefit analysis is urgently needed taking the cost of manpower formation into account. At the same time the demand for private security reflects the slow pace of adaptation of the military-bureaucratic complex to new tasks.

• Zur Zukunft des Krieges

  20. Juni 2005
  The economic logic of neo-liberal regulation of globalisation produces a dynamic sphere of shadow globalisation. The war against terror expands this space beyond the rule of law. Shrinking state capacities accelerate the privatisation of security. The changes in the human habitat and the economic imperatives reigning parties involved in armed conflicts increasingly limit the scope of armed conflict.

• Lock Peter : curriculum vitae

  31 May 2005
  Peter Lock graduated in sociology and economics and expanded into political science/international relations with his doctoral degree. Civil-military relations in all its aspects was the focus of his research and teaching during the Cold War period. Ever since the privatisation of security in all its aspects was at the centre of his research interest. As a result «shadow globalisation» as a dynamic social system mirrors the neoliberal transformation of the global economy and the ensuing «transsubstantiation» or «diffusion» of the nation state into markets turned into the current paradigm of the on-going research endeavour.

• Economic Factors of Conflict and Violence

  30 November 2004
  This work package conceives of globalisation as a complex web of intertwined parallel dynamics, which determine both the regular economy and the rapidly expanding shadow economy. It aims at identifying the growing numbers of social groups developing transnational identities in the twilight of shadow globalisation. Social and economic spheres beyond state control and outside the rule of law appear to be expanding and transforming into dynamic transnational networks. New forms of social control emerge alongside shrinking states whose monopoly of legitimate violence is weakening. For systemic reasons the economic spheres of shadow globalisation are not fully accounted for in official statistics. As a result methodological descriptions of emerging patterns on the basis of diverse, widely scattered information form the main building blocks of this research.