Field Of Surveillance Studies Research Articles

FIRE Watchers: The Centrality of Surveillance (Studies) for Finance, Insurance, Real Estate

The deepening integration of the technology sector with the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, real estate) is, arguably, one of the most consequential developments in contemporary political economy. With names like fintech, insurtech, and proptech, the influence of these industries can be found everywhere and only continues to grow. At their heart, the rise of FIRE-tech is about upgrading old and building new forms of surveillance and then applying them to increasingly more people, places, and processes. And yet, critical research on FIRE-tech from the field of surveillance studies has not kept pace with these developments. This special issue offers us a chance to look back on the contributions made by the field and look ahead at the challenges it now faces. As we think about the issues and agendas that should guide our research moving forward, there is value in bringing surveillance studies and FIRE-tech into closer alignment. Doing so provides an opportunity to increase the analytical power and ongoing relevance of the field by critically confronting the development, purpose, and impact of FIRE-tech. In short, we should frame FIRE as surveillance and we should see surveillance via FIRE.

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

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.

Introduction : Réception littéraire et critique du Panoptisme

The introduction first goes back on Jeremy Bentham’s historical scheme to highlight lesser-known traits and show how it was not limited to carceral applications, a versatility which has been reflected in literature. It then moves on to Foucault’s chapter on panopticism in Discipline and Punish, foregrounding its most influential aspects as well as others which are often overlooked. The third part focuses on the reception of Foucault’s panopticism in literary criticism, from the seminal studies of D.A. Miller and John Bender to contemporary times. The fourth part deals with the influence of panopticism within the field of surveillance studies, as well as the input offered by literature for these discussions. The introduction then presents the structure of the issue and offers a summary of each of the five articles and of the final interview.

Desafíos de la videovigilancia automatizada

Automated and semi-automated video surveillance, with facial and behavioral recognition algorithms, is generating international debates which are important to delve into without rushing to quick, but neither slow, conclusions. Unlike other countries in America and Europe, in 2020 Argentina still does not have a national regulatory law for classic video surveillance, and the most populated district with the most cameras in the country, the Province of Buenos Aires, does not have its own integral regulatory framework either. The fragile institutional foundations that receive this advanced technology should not be overlooked if negative effects are to be avoided, not only in the protection of privacy, but also in terms of strengthening the right to security, which is the reason that legitimizes its implementation. The main intention of this paper, framed in the field of surveillance studies and public policies, is contribute from a Social Sciences perspective to unravel some conceptual knots that, in addition to generating recurrent misunderstandings, have normative effects that collaborate in naturalizing certain practices that require further thought. Among them, we can mention the imprecise and mechanical assimilation of surveillance and security; the relative effectiveness of video surveillance systems in terms of security and judicial functions; the relationship between the rights to privacy and intimacy with public space; the links between the techno-logical and the ideo-logical; etc. These aspects will be exemplified through the case of the implementation of this technology in the City of Buenos Aires, through the documentary analysis of regulations and official documents.

Editorial: Platform Surveillance

This editorial introduces this special responsive issue on “platform surveillance.” We develop the term platform surveillance to account for the manifold and often insidious ways that digital platforms fundamentally transform social practices and relations, recasting them as surveillant exchanges whose coordination must be technologically mediated and therefore made exploitable as data. In the process, digital platforms become dominant social structures in their own right, subordinating other institutions, conjuring or sedimenting social divisions and inequalities, and setting the terms upon which individuals, organizations, and governments interact. Emergent forms of platform capitalism portend new governmentalities, as they gradually draw existing institutions into alignment or harmonization with the logics of platform surveillance while also engendering subjectivities (e.g., the gig-economy worker) that support those logics. Because surveillance is essential to the operations of digital platforms, because it structures the forms of governance and capital that emerge, the field of surveillance studies is uniquely positioned to investigate and theorize these phenomena.

Surveillance as Communicating Relational Messages: Advancing Understandings of the Surveilled Subject

Theoretical understandings of how and why surveilled subjects perceive and react to surveillance have rarely been engaged in the field of surveillance studies. This research introduces relational models of procedural justice as a framework through which the attitudes and behaviours of surveilled subjects can be more consistently understood in particular (but not singular) surveillance contexts. Qualitative analysis of encounters with surveillance at Pearson International Airport (Toronto, Canada) demonstrates that participants were attentive to relational concerns during these encounters. The findings are positioned in relation to the procedural justice literature to demonstrate the importance of the process of surveillance alongside, or even apart from, its outcomes in terms of understanding and explaining surveilled subjects’ experiences and formation of subjectivities at airports and perhaps more generally.

Mediating Surveillance: The Developing Landscape of European Online Copyright Enforcement

After a period of relative laissez faire, governments around the world are beginning to attempt to regulate online life, for a variety of reasons, through various mechanisms of surveillance and control. The drive to enforce the respect of copyright is at the forefront of these attempts, a highly controversial topic which pits proponents of the rights of the creative industry against advocates of freedom of speech. 
 Apart from their inflammatory nature, one distinguishing characteristic of most of these schemes is that they are mediated: that is, they are conducted with the help of third parties, most often internet service providers. The mediation of surveillance is something as yet relatively underexplored by the field of surveillance studies, whose theoretical tools are by and large focussed on a two way relationship between watcher and watched. This article seeks to remedy this deficit, by examining the dynamics of mediation in the context of online copyright enforcement. We argue that, far from being a neutral process, the displacement of surveillance to third parties has a crucial impact on the way in which it is conducted. In particular, the expanding capacity of mediators becomes a reason for justifying surveillance in and of itself.

Perceptions of surveillance: Reflexivity and trust in a mediatized world (the case of Sweden)

Even though the field of surveillance studies has expanded during the last decade, there is still a need for studies that empirically explain and contextualize people’s perceptions of the increasingly mediatized ‘surveillance society’. This article provides a ‘middle range’ social theorization, following Giddens, as well as an updated empirical account, based on a nationwide Swedish survey, of how various forms of surveillance are perceived as social phenomena. Through factor analysis three dimensions are elaborated: state surveillance, commercial surveillance and mediated interveillance. The article argues that the realm of interveillance blurs the line between systemic and social trust, and thus calls for context-specific modes of routinized reflexivity. Whereas such modes of boundary maintenance may potentially run across social lines of division, the results suggest that the management of interveillance primarily constitutes an instance of sociocultural structuration.

Surveillance under Mussolini's regime

This paper focuses on state surveillance under Mussolini’s regime (1922–1943) in Italy. While the cultural approach to Italian fascism has been fertile (de Grazia 1981; 1992; Ghirardo 1996; Whitaker 2000), archival research on police state surveillance is very limited and, due to the language barrier, has remained unknown in the field of Surveillance Studies. This short contribution is both an attempt to reckon with a surveillance past that has been neglected until recent times and to engage with revealing studies specifically related to state surveillance and classification. Surveillance under the duce was multifaceted and this paper aims at exploring the twenty years of the regime by focusing on different surveillance stages through a socio–historical perspective. Moreover, the concluding remarks briefly address some important issues which are related to political and cultural legacies of the fascist dictatorship that are essential to understanding some contemporary trends

Situated Surveillance: an ethnographic study of fisheries inspection in Denmark

The field of surveillance studies has gained momentum and with that broadened its empirical gaze to include an increasing number of practices. Yet, the theoretical understanding of surveillance has not developed at the same pace.In this article two dominating metaphors, Big Brother and the panopticon, are critically discussed, and it is argued that fresh theoretical and methodological resources are needed. Using the work of Haraway and Latour the article develops an understanding of surveillance as a situated activity. This is done through an ethnographic study of the Danish Fisheries Inspection. “Situated surveillance” contains the important insight that it is inexpedient to define surveillance in general term and “in advance”. What surveillance is must be studied empirically. When interpreted as “situated” surveillance is never total, as anticipated in Big Brother and the panopticon, but limited and partial. Furthermore, surveillance is a result of work involving exertion, friction and resistance. Finally, the distinction between the observer and the observed is blurred, and surveillance becomes not only a matter of control but also of e.g. care.

Random Digit Darling: The Telephone Turn in the American Social and Behavioral Sciences

This experimental essay traces the rise of phone-based data collection within the American social and behavioral sciences over the last third of the twentieth century. Exploring aural cultures of surveillance and the eroticization of abstract data, the essay aims to disrupt the privileged status granted to optics within the field of Surveillance Studies-- particularly when it comes to questions of sex and sexualization. Written in the style of the scripts commonly used when conducting phone-based research, the essay positions you (the reader) as a staff interviewer collecting data for a fictional present-day study regarding modern sex practices. Today, the focus of your study is the curious case of 'databaters': a term used for the male masturbators who, as a means to elicit intimate information from unsuspecting call recipients, pretend to be social and behavioral scientists conducting exactly this sort of phone-based research. By the mid-1970s, databaters became one of the most common types of problem calls reported by American women. While the background information provided within your script might also reveal a persistent tradition of intimate transgressions within 'real' phone-based social and behavioral science, any such effect is entirely inadvertent.