Articles by Peer Illner
Culture Unbound, 2015
This article intervenes in a debate in cultural disaster studies that interprets disasters as obj... more This article intervenes in a debate in cultural disaster studies that interprets disasters as objects, whose study opens up an understanding of societies’ fears, anxieties and vulnerabilities. Widening the scope of disaster studies, it proposes to view
disaster not as an object but as an optics, a matrix that frames elements of social life as an emergency. Presenting the case of the American Black Panther Party for Self- Defense through a framework of security studies, the article explores the Black
Panthers’ politics as a process of societal securitisation that allowed African Americans to mobilise politically by proclaiming an emergency. It traces a political trajectory that ranged from an early endorsement of revolutionary violence to the promotion of
community services and casts this journey as a negotiation of the question of identity and ontological security in times of crisis. Drawing on Black studies and on stigma theory, it suggests finally, that the Panthers’ abandonment of violence represented a
shift from identity-politics to an engagement with structural positionality.
Book Chapters by Peer Illner
American Urban Politics in a Global Age, 2024
The statute quoted is 42 U.S.C. 1 1983. 51 Of course, a homeless person who was physically injure... more The statute quoted is 42 U.S.C. 1 1983. 51 Of course, a homeless person who was physically injured or whose property was destroyed could bring a criminal complaint or a civil suit for damages. The former is dif cult, given how closely private security forces work with police (sometimes sharing a substation). The latter has been pursued successfully by homeless individuals. 
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Articles by Peer Illner
disaster not as an object but as an optics, a matrix that frames elements of social life as an emergency. Presenting the case of the American Black Panther Party for Self- Defense through a framework of security studies, the article explores the Black
Panthers’ politics as a process of societal securitisation that allowed African Americans to mobilise politically by proclaiming an emergency. It traces a political trajectory that ranged from an early endorsement of revolutionary violence to the promotion of
community services and casts this journey as a negotiation of the question of identity and ontological security in times of crisis. Drawing on Black studies and on stigma theory, it suggests finally, that the Panthers’ abandonment of violence represented a
shift from identity-politics to an engagement with structural positionality.
Book Chapters by Peer Illner