As the Dialogue Editor of Surveillance & Society, I invite expressions of interest to write short (~2000-word) papers for an upcoming Dialogue section of the journal on the topic of "The Current State of Sousveillance/Inverse Surveillance in 2020."

The big-picture question we are seeking to examine is: Looking back in 2020 (when the issue will be published), has sousveillance served a liberating purpose? or has it simply become another surveillance tool (or data source) for governments and/or corporations, maintaining the very structures of power it was designed to overcome? Specifically, I am looking for short contributions that answer this question and, in the process, also critically examine some combination of the following three issues:

1. Whether the long-touted social, political, and/or democratic benefits of sousveillance have been realized in practice (and, if so, how; if not, how has it fallen short?);
2. What sousveillance looks like in 2020, and how it may have changed over the past decades; and
3. What place sousveillance should play in the context of our current social and political time (e.g., in 2020) and into the future.

"The social aspect of self-empowerment suggests that sousveillance is an act of liberation, of staking our public territory, and a leveling of the surveillance playing field. Yet, the ubiquitous total surveillance that sousveillance now affords is an ultimate act of acquiescence on the part of the individual. Universal surveillance/sousveillance may, in the end, only serve the ends of the existing dominant power structure. Universal sur/sousveillance may support the power structures by fostering broad accessibility of monitoring and ubiquitous data collection. Or as William Gibson comments in the feature length motion picture film CYBERMAN ('You're surveilling the surveillance. And if everyone were surveilling the surveillance, the surveillance would be neutralized. It would be unnecessary.'” (Mann, Nolan, and Wellman, Surveillance & Society 1(3), 2003: 347)

If you are interested in proposing a short paper for inclusion in this discussion, which will include a mix of invited and proposed papers, please send the following to me on or before the end of day on Sept. 15, 2019 (to [log in to unmask]):

Please note that Dialogue pieces are not refereed, but are subject to editorial review and, if (tentatively) accepted, possible requests for revision.

Sincerely,

Bryce