InVisibilities

The politics, practice and experience of surveillance in everyday life

A two-day international conference hosted by

The Centre For Criminological Research, University of Sheffield, UK

in association with

Surveillance & Society

www.surveillance-and-society.org

&

The Surveillance Studies Network 

www.surveillance-studies.net

Wednesday 2^nd April - Thursday 3^rd April 2008

While many of the world’s nations are becoming surveillance societies, the nature of life with surveillance in those societies is far from homogeneous, and is not widely researched or theorised. This conference focuses on the lived realities of surveillance and is keen to encourage empirical studies which document its everyday experience.

By its very nature surveillance makes populations visible, and differentiates between their members; surveillance itself features varied techniques, intensities and foci.  Whether as workers, consumers, children, patients, criminals, web surfers or travellers we are made visible in different ways, through different technologies and administrative regimes.  Visibility is not always total, unproductive or oppressive – visibility is necessarily partial.   For some it is actively embraced: lives are lived in visibility.

Nevertheless, widespread ambivalence towards surveillance has been noted in academic, policy and media circles. As surveillance confers benefits and incurs costs on individuals, personal information economies of surveillance emerge.  In building personal strategies which involve surveillance practices, invisibilities are negotiated to mediate, limit and exploit exposure to surveillance.  How individuals, groups, organizations and societies negotiate, experience, resist, comply with, and enjoy surveillance are critical empirical questions, which appeal to surveillance scholars from a wide range of social science disciplines.

Keynote Speakers:

Zygmunt Bauman, David Lyon, John McGrath

Key themes include:

• Experiencing Surveillance and Visibility
• Participatory and Voluntary Surveillance
• Theorising (in)visibility
• Histories of Surveillance and Visibility
• Surveillance of the Other - Visibility and Difference
• Representations of Surveillance in Film/Art/Literature/Media
• State Surveillance and Identification
• Surveillance and consumer visibility
• The transparent body
• Researching (in)visibility
• Spatial visibilities
• Surveillance futures

The conference is also truly international with provisional offers of over 70 papers from fourteen countries including speakers from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden, UK and the USA. Speakers include:

Conference Accommodation

Please find below information about booking your accommodation for the Invisibilities Conference in Sheffield.  Please note booking accommodation is the responsibility of the delegate, and we would advise that you do this as soon as possible.

You can either:

1) Use the Sheffield Tourism booking form, which can be found at:

https://www.conferencebookings.co.uk/delegate/YSTINVISIBILITIES08

2) Or you may prefer to book your hotel independently by contacting hotels directly.  A list of hotels can be found here:

http://www.sheffield.gov.uk/out--about/tourist-information/staying-in-sheffield

3) There is also University accommodation available at a cost of £40.00 for en-suite and £30.00 for shared facilities.  Please note that the en-suite facilities are limited and cannot be guaranteed and will be allocated on a first  come first served basis. If you wish to take up the University accommodation option, it is imperative that you e-mail Lisa Burns at  [log in to unmask]  as  a matter of urgency as numbers are limited.

Conference Organisation

The list of speakers will be available on the conference web page from 4^th February

www.sheffield.ac.uk/ccr

The Conference Fee is £200 per person, which includes refreshments and lunch and an optional two years' membership of Surveillance Studies Network. The membership fee will be used to promote the charitable activities of the Surveillance Studies Network, support the continued publication of the Journal of Surveillance and Society and give other benefits to members

The fee will include refreshments and lunch, but not overnight accommodation or evening meals. There will be a conference dinner on April 2^nd at an additional charge of £50.

How to Book

If you would like a booking form please email Lisa Burns at  [log in to unmask] 

You can also download the conference forms from: www.sheffield.ac.uk/ccr

Returning them by email to:

[log in to unmask]  as soon as possible and no later than March 6^th 2008

Or by post to:

We look forward to seeing you at the conference

Professor Clive Norris

On behalf of the Organising Committee