Message
[appologies for
cross-posting]
Surveillance & Society – Call for
Papers
Special Issue on Surveillance and Inequality: Issue
5(4)
(Guest editors: Torin Monahan and Jill A.
Fisher)
Publication date: December 2007
Deadline for
submissions: 15 July 2007
Many domains of social life are being
transfigured by new technologies of identification, monitoring, tracking, data
analysis, and control. The lived experiences of people subjected to
surveillance, however, can vary widely along lines of race, class, gender,
sexual orientation, age, and nationality. This can be seen with the
enforcement of different types of mobilities for different categories of people,
whether at borders, on city streets, or on the Internet. It can also be
observed with the increasingly invasive monitoring and discipline of those
accessing public services, such as welfare, public education, or healthcare,
especially in the U.S. It can be perceived in security-screening and
police-profiling practices, which continue to rely upon racial markers of
“risk.” Or inequality can be found in the uneven treatment of individuals
by insurance providers, credit agencies, service centers, or other commercial
entities. Regardless of the domain, new surveillance systems appear to
amplify existing social inequalities and establish rationales for increased
control of marginalized groups in societies.
The journal Surveillance
& Society is seeking papers that examine issues of surveillance and
inequality. The editors are especially interested in research papers that
address the differential effects of surveillance upon marginalized and
privileged social groups. Whereas surveillance studies inquiry often
begins with technology as a starting point for analysis, we welcome papers that
start with descriptions of power relations in any social settings and then move
to illustrate the role of surveillance technologies or practices in the
regulation of those settings. We further encourage contributions that
theorize the relationship of the political economy to surveillance and
inequality, whether by attending to globalization processes, neoliberal
policies, or military operations. Finally, we are also quite interested in
papers that seek to demonstrate or theorize the empowering potential of
surveillance systems to correct social inequalities.
Possible papers
could investigate the role of surveillance
in:
- The regulation of gender or status relations in places of employment.
- Socio-spatial segregation in cities, suburbs, exurbs, or rural
communities.
- The restructuring or elimination of public programs and spaces (or citizen
rights) by neoliberal policies – which could include a focus on schools,
welfare, healthcare, voting, etc.
- Racial or ethnic profiling by police, security personnel, or immigration
agents.
- The enforcement of differential mobilities (along with inquiry into the
relationship of mobilities to the life chances and well-being of travelers).
- The automatic prioritizing of services, rights, and mobilities in
software-sorted service domains.
- The control of women’s bodies, especially in regard to reproduction.
- Monitoring of children or the elderly – or the monitoring of those charged
with taking care of them.
- The militarization of borders and the corresponding dangers faced by
undocumented immigrants, refugees, and others.
Submissions should
be sent electronically to Emily Smith, at [log in to unmask] by 15 July 2007 with a
publication date of December 2007.
We welcome full academic papers,
opinion pieces, review pieces, poetry, artistic, and audio-visual
submissions. Submissions will undergo a peer-review and revision process
prior to publication. Submissions should be original work, neither
previously published nor under consideration for publication elsewhere.
All references to previous work by contributors should be masked in the text
(e.g., “Author, 2007”). Please see: www.surveillance-and-society.org/call.htm for
further submission guidelines.
Torin Monahan
Assistant
Professor
Arizona State University
School of Justice & Social
Inquiry
[log in to unmask] | www.torinmonahan.com
