From: D F J Wood [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: 31 January 2009 17:26
To: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]
Subject: Call for Papers: Surveillance and Childhood

Surveillance & Society | Call for Papers <http://www.surveillance-and-society.org>

Special Issue: Surveillance, Children and Childhood

Guest edited by Valerie Steeves<mailto:[log in to unmask]> and Owain Jones<mailto:[log in to unmask]> 


To be a child is to be under surveillance. Parents watch their children to keep them safe and to correct their behaviour; teachers keep an eye on students to enforce classroom rules and to maintain discipline; those running shopping malls and many other semi-public places use a variety of methods to keep young people under control in order to maintain those spaces for adult usage, sensibilities and consumption.

Depending on age, which is critical in this context, it can be argued that surveillance as care is a necessary condition of caring for and educating young people. However, the increasing normalization of surveillance technologies in the social spaces that young people inhabit raises important questions about the effect of pervasive surveillance on young people's everyday lives, their sense of identity and their social relationships.

Powerful constructions of childhood (adult assumptions of what children are and should be) revolve not only around surveillance of children at different ages in different ways, but also on control and correction on the back of it. Chris Jenks (2005) has set out Apollonian (innocent) and Dionysian (corrupt/original sin) constructions of childhood, both of which demand different regimes of surveillance (either to protect the innocent from harmful experience, or to police and tame the feral child.

Beyond, or perhaps within these ideological framings of childhood, are more immediate questions of how the everyday monitoring of children in an array of settings potentially constrains their fundamental freedoms/rights, and also their developmental need to explore the world away from the watchful eyes of adults while, paradoxically, opening up interstitial spaces within which children can resist adult authority. An increasing array of children's social spaces - the home, the street, the school, real world and virtual playgrounds - and children's practices - eating, exercising, playing, sleeping, learning - are being placed under surveillance for a variety of purposes. At the same time, children have increasingly embedded networked communications tools into their social lives, enabling others to capture their everyday activities in a seamless data stream.

We need to pay attention to how such spaces, practices and technologies intersect in terms of surveillance, control and children's everyday lives. The resulting tension between emerging forms of self expression and community, on the one hand, and neo-liberal responsibilization and commodification, on the other hand, makes this a particularly apt topic for a special edition of Surveillance & Society. It will make a significant contribution to both surveillance studies and childhood studies by bringing the two together in this key journal. To this end, we seek papers from various disciplines and theoretical standpoints that explore the following areas:

- Surveillance of children in families and the home (e.g. nanny cams)
- Surveillance of children as protection and care (e.g. spy phones GPS tracking)
- Surveillance of children in educational systems and spaces (e.g. key stroke capture, acceptable use policies)
- Surveillance and play (e.g. the role of adult Play Rangers, corporate surveillance on online playgrounds)
- Surveillance and the neoliberal construction of childhood
- Surveillance and children's competencies
- Children's resistances to surveillance
- Surveillance of children in a range of public and private spaces (e.g. domestic, educational, commercial, urban, suburban and rural etc)
- Surveillance technologies and practices around children
- Historical perspectives on surveillance and children
- Discourses of 'stranger-danger' and resulting surveillance action

We are also open to other subjects not outlined above. Please contact the guest-editors, Valerie Steeves<mailto:[log in to unmask]> and Owain Jones<mailto:[log in to unmask]> in advance to discuss proposed topics.

All papers must be submitted through the new online submission system no later than August 31st 2009, for publication January 2010 (Vol 7). 
Please use the revised standard S&S formatting and submit the papers in a MS Word-compatible document.


Dr David Murakami Wood
ESRC Research Fellow, Global Urban Research Unit | Visiting Scholar, Postgraduate Program in Urban Management
Newcastle University, UK                                            | Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil
e-mail: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | website: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/guru/staff/profile/d.f.j.wood | blog: <http://ubisurv.wordpress.com/>

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************************************************************************************
Distributed through Cyber-Society-Live [CSL]: CSL is a moderated discussion
list made up of people who are interested in the interdisciplinary academic
study of Cyber Society in all its manifestations.To join the list please visit:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/cyber-society-live.html
*************************************************************************************