Building a Latin American Agenda for Studies on Surveillance, Technology, and Society

Abstract

It has become inescapable to question the conditions of constitution for sociotechnical surveillance arrangements in different contexts, and with that we have seen an increase in interest in studies dedicated to the understanding of the specificities of the social and historical construction of surveillance in Latin American countries from ontologies and epistemologies that are closest to their realities. This has happened both from the point of view of understanding the processes of use of surveillance by governments and companies in the neoliberal management of bodies and territories, as well as in the organization of resistance to more or less explicit violence operated by technologies of control. In this paper, we describe the circumstances in which a decolonial agenda for Latin American countries has been built by scholars, activists, and artists associated with the Latin American Network of Surveillance, Technology and Society Studies (LAVITS). The work of the network has always benefited from the critical thinking formed in the field of surveillance studies with crucial contributions coming from the Surveillance Studies Network and Surveillance & Society in the past twenty years.