bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Book review: Federal Dynamics: Continuity, Change and the Varieties of Federalism
Authors: Hinchly Victoria
Published: July 2018

Federal systems are praised for creating political stability, but they are also blamed for causing rigidity. They are said to balance powers, but apparently they are also threatened by instability due to drifts in power. Federalism should support democratization, but it can also constrain the power of the demos and strengthen the executive. In short, there is widespread agreement that federal systems are dynamic. The forces, mechanisms and consequences of federal dynamics, however, are not sufficiently understood so far. This book brings together leading experts in the field of comparative federalism to highlight how the interplay of continuity and change systematically generates and reinforces varieties of federalism and varieties of federal dynamics. Federal Dynamics: Continuity, Change and Varieties of Federalism investigates mechanisms and resulting patterns of federal development. It offers new analytical concepts and discusses different theoretical propositions to systematically compare convergent and divergent trends in federal systems. Acknowledging the theoretical pluralism that dominates the field, the book is organized around four sections: Models, Varieties and Dimensions of Federalism; Timing, Sequencing and Historical Evolution; Social Change and Political Structuring; and Actors, Institutions and Internal Dynamics. The contributions to this volume are variously concerned with three guiding questions: What changes within federal systems, how and why? The focus provided by these three guiding questions allows for a dialogue between strands of the literature that have not talked to each other in a sufficient manner. In this way, the book makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on continuity and change in federal systems. Ultimately, it represents a substantive effort in advancing research on comparative federalism.
Introduction
Authors: Burgess Michael , Keil Soeren
Published: July 2018

This collection of articles brings together several discrete but overlapping perspectives of both the content and form of federalism. In most cases there is an empirical focus upon centralising and decentralising trends in federal states, but here and there is also a focus upon federalisation as a process, and special attention is paid to the notion of de-federalisation in the case of the Russian Federation.
Centralisation and Disgregation and Public Opinion: the Future of the Spanish State of Autonomias.
Authors: Hidalgo-Redondo Oscar
Published: July 2018

The Spanish model of decentralisation has been described by academics as a successful example of solving territorial questions under difficult circumstances. The original assessment is confronting with a reality that shows that in the last decade political forces and public opinions have changed the evaluation that made of this process. This paper analyses the evolution of the decentralisation model in Spain and assess the changes among the Spanish public with the presence of two opposite tendencies: a centrifugal one, in favour of increasing the level of autonomy moving towards confederative solutions; and a centripetal one, that defends the need of rationalising the state of autonomias increasing the capacity of the central government to legislate and coordinate the actions of the regions.
Procedurally reducing complexity. The practices of German EU policy coordination
Authors: Hegele Yvonne
Published: July 2018

Policy coordination in federal states is inherently complex because it includes a multitude of actors at the federal and the sub-state level. If the sub-states want their interests to be included in the final decision, they need to coordinate with the federal level but also amongst themselves. Several individual interests areoverlooked easier than coordinated interests of a group of sub-states. This paper puts forward the argument that during the coordination process, the actors from both levels meet in different constellations where they focus on different aspects of coordination, especially on different actors’ interests separately. This is a strategy which enables them to procedurally reduce the complexity of the decision-making process. In order to empirically investigate this argument, first a thorough definition of coordination as process is provided and operationalized for empirical investigation. It is accentuated that coordination as a process has different dimensions which are relevant for the understanding of the coordination process. This argument is analyzedwith the example case of German EU policy. The empirical data used are original expert interviews with German civil servants responsible for EU policy coordination at the sub-state level. It will be demonstrated that the actors strategically form voluntary coordination constellations which enables them to reduce complexity during the process.
THE “FOURTH STREAM”. The Power of Hidden Participants to Implement Policy with the Aid of the High Courts
Authors: Swan Robert
Published: July 2018

Due to financial constraints and a lack of bed space caused by a large influx of inmates over the last decade, the Oregon Department of Corrections has been utilizing penal policy that – in one form or another – involves the interstate import and export of prisoners. However, in order to transport, exchange or “lease” inmates to states, the Oregon Department of Corrections must utilize the Federal Interstate Compact Act, and in so doing, has entered into various interstate corrections compact. The original purpose of the Federal Interstate Compact has evolved over time and the actual legal authority allowing Oregon to transfer inmates to out-of-state prisons is quite murky. Similarly, though it appears that the evolution of interstate compacts allowing the interstate transfer of prisoners has primarily been propelled by high court decisions, the role of legislation is less clear.
CONSTITUTION-MAKING AS INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS.A Case Study of the 1980 Canadian Constitutional Negotiations
Authors: McDonald Adam D.
Published: July 2018

The Constitution Act, 1982 is a document that profoundly changed the Canadian political landscape. It brought home the highest law of the land; it provided Canadians a mechanism to change their Constitution; it created a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, entrenched within the Constitution, out of the reach of one government. Perhaps its most important legacies, however, are the seemingly permanent isolation of Quebec and the primacy of place in Canadian history it gave Pierre Trudeau. This paper will examine the constitutional history of Canada with a view to determining what made the 1980 negotiating sessions successful when the sessions that led to both the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord were not. It is important, however, to note that the word “successful” is used in the sense that an agreement was reached. Unlike Meech and Charlottetown, the repatriated constitution did not have unanimity among the participants. The question that comes to mind is this: if the governments did not really agree in 1981, why was a Constitution ratified? More importantly, are there lessons that can be drawn from this agreement that can be applied to the failed accords of the Mulroney era?
Will e-Governance and e-Democracy Lead to e-Empowerment? Gendering the Cyber State
Authors: McNutt Kathleen
Published: July 2018

The onslaught of information and communications technologies (ICTs), theburgeoning popularity of the Internet, and the ideology behind the new information economy has coalesced into a force that is fundamentally reshaping the contours of the Canadian political landscape. This reorganization of the state will profoundly impact women’s opportunities to participate in and alter conventional notions of citizenship. The establishment of electronic or e-government and the implications behind the development of the cyberstate promise to revolutionize Canadian governance and our traditional understandings of democracy. While there is the political possibility of shaping the emerging cyberstate as a vehicle of empowerment for women and marginalized others, there is also the prospect that Internet-facilitated government will exacerbate inequalities and impair women’s citizenship status.
Governing though Educational Discourse. The Case of Integration in Israel, 1970-1973
Authors: Mashal Tali Yariv
Published: July 2018

Issues of ethnicity, culture, and national identity have been central in every political and social circle in Israel since the first days of the Zionist movement. The “new Jew,” a term created and lionized by the Zionist movement at the end of the 19th century, shadowed Israeli society and remained a critical part of the struggle for national identity and unity in the State of Israel after its independence in 1948. This Jew was to be a white, educated, westernized citizen, involved in both political and social processes, knowledgeable in the terms of the Western world. The concepts of the new Israeli-Jew completely ignored the fact that since the first days of the Zionism movement, the Middle Eastern Jew, born, raised and significantly involved in Arab countries, was a notable part of it and of the process of building the Jewish state of Israel.
Nationalism on the Island. The Legitimacy of Corsican Nationalist Movements in Question
Authors: Vieille Stéphanie
Published: July 2018

The article seeks to uncover and bring to attention an important issue and nationalist struggle at the heart of the European Union. While casualties and bombings caused by the Corsican nationalist movement constantly occupy the headline of various French and European newspapers, it has received little attention in academics spheres. Yet, such movement provides an interesting test case for the analysis of nationalist discourse and the accommodation of minorities within European integration and the Europe of Regions. This article will start by drawing a short profile of the island before exploring the different stages of development of the Corsican nationalist movement. We will then analysing the elements that compose the Corsican identity before concentrating on the discourse of one of the most notorious Corsican nationalistmovement. We will conclude by questioning the legitimacy and future of such movements within the European integration.
CHANGING THE CONSTITUTION: How Nationalist Parties in Regional Government are bringing Change to the UK Constitution
Authors: Harvey Malcom
Published: July 2018

This paper will examine the dynamics of devolution in the United Kingdom since the 2007 elections to the Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales which resulted in the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru entering government for the first time in their history. It will analyse the impact that their participation in governance at this level has had upon their stated goals of constitutional change. In particular it will examine the methods employed by these parties in order to advance these constitutional goals – specifically the role of consultation and referendum in creating the pressure for change. It will argue that both have been key drivers for constitutional change and have created what has become a critical mass regarding the constitutional debate in the UK.
UNDERSTANDING URBAN GOVERNANCE IN THE CONTEXT OF PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS: A Case Study of Solid- Waste Management in Rayong Municipality, Thailand
Authors: Kritjaroen Taweesak
Published: July 2018

Local government practices in Thailand have become more networking orgovernance-oriented since the promulgation of the Constitution of 1997 and the Decentralization Plan and Process Act of 1999. Several local governments have applied modern concepts of New Public Management (NPM) in order to perform their tasks. Public- Private Partnership is, therefore, regarded as a mode of governance for the sake of successful public service delivery. This article aims to describe and analyze local governance in political economy perspective. The case study of Rayong Municipality is selected to present the factors that drove the emergence of public-private partnership and how local government coalitions cooperate in public service delivery, especially the case of solid-waste management. The waste problem in Rayong Municipality had risen considerably due to the rapid increase in population, a trend that may continue in the future. The causes of the problem are many; lack of proper disposal units, limited budget, personnel and landfill areas. This problem has a negative impact on the quality of life in the municipality and therefore this is best dealt with collectively. The project that has been implemented is the waste recycling scheme, garbage banking in schools and communities. The Waste-to-Fertiliser and Energy project makes the Integrated Waste Management Approach complete with the cooperation from other government agencies and NGOs and the involvement of the private sector as PPP.
Obama Deception?: Empire, ‘postracism’ and White Supremacy in the campaign and election of Barack Obama
Authors: Kitossa Tamari
Published: July 2018

This essay aims to provide a socio-historical account of the role that white supremacy played in the Presidential ascendancy of Barack Obama. Far from transcending race, Mr. Obama explicitly crafted his political ontology to articulate a discourse of post-racism. A central claim I make is that Mr. Obama selectively and strategically appropriated the enterprise of anti-racism by deploying a postmodern amorphous blackness that simultaneously undermined it. On one hand he assuaged White anxiety about whether a Black President will seek to call in the lien African Americans have on the state and White US society. On the other, he propagated the belief that where Whites voted for him, this confirmed the triumphal defeat of racism. In either case, by trading on his ambiguous biography, his personage was made to affirm both the end of racism and the redundancy of anti-racist action.
BOOK REVIEW: Viola Desmond’s Canada: A History of Blacks and Racial Segregation in the Promised Land, by Graham Reynolds with Wanda Robson. (2016). Winnipeg, MB: Fernwood Publishing.
Authors: McCorkindale Deirdre
Published: July 2018

BOOK REVIEWViola Desmond’s Canada: A History of Blacks and Racial Segregation in the Promised Land, by Graham Reynolds with Wanda Robson. (2016). Winnipeg, MB: Fernwood Publishing.
SIT Academy: Online learning using the MOOC approach
Authors: Sirikojakorn Theeranuch , Chamamahattana Jirayu , Vanijja Vajirasak , Charoenkitkarn Nipon , Chan Jonathan H.
Published: July 2018

Abstract – At present, there are several online or elearning opportunities in Thailand that serve Thai students. However, e-learning alone is not sufficient for providing an effective learning environment. The students lack proper continual learning guidance. Similarly, there is usually a gap in communication between students and instructors. Moreover, e-learning alone does not provide a tool to help instructors measure the effectiveness of teaching or manage the course content. In this discussion paper, we present the SIT Academy learning system that is based on a MOOC framework to enhance the learning experience of students and provide a set of useful tools for instructors to manage MOOC course efficiently. Test trials will be undertaken in the fall semester of 2017.
Images of Suspicion: Surveillance Photos in the Brazilian Political Police Archives
Authors: Lissovsky Mauricio , Bastos Teresa
Published: July 2018

Between its foundation under President Vargas in the 1930s until its closure with the end of the Military Dictatorship in 1983, the Brazilian Political Police Archive accumulated more than one hundred thousand photographs, These pictures, now held in the collections of the State Archive of Rio de Janeiro are almost entirely unknown. Despite the big differences between the various governments and regimes of its fifty years of existence, the common objects of surveillance by the police remained remarkably constant: trade unions, political parties, cultural associations, women’s movements, student movements, anarchists, communists and terrorists. Foreigners, including diplomats, whose activities raised suspicion of espionage or subversion were also kept a watchful eye on. The contemporary surveillance camera has its signature in the wide-angle plongée machinic abstract style, but in the files of the political police, the watchers are always finding ways to leave traces of their own performances as spies. Agamben’s ideas help us to create, in this exploratory essay, a dialogic link between the booking photographs taken of the political prisoners and the spy photographs of the usual suspects. In this sense, these images of suspicion testify not only to the “facts” or “feats” of those men and women under observation. In the trail left by these old photographs we can still hear the steps that once choreographed the ballet of surveillance, a strange pas-de-deux that found, in the interstice of the photographic act, a place for authorship.
Surveillance Aesthetics in Latin America: Work in progress
Authors: Bruno Fernanda , Barreto Paola , Szafir Milena
Published: July 2018

This on line curatorship presents a selection of 11 works by Latin American artists who incorporate in their creations technologies traditionally linked to surveillance and control processes. By Surveillance Aesthetics we understand a compound of artistic practices, which include the appropriation of dispositifs such as closed circuit video, webcams, satellite images, algorithms and computer vision among others, placing them within new visibility, attention and experience regimes. The term referred to in the title of this exhibition is intended more as a vector of research rather than the determination of a field, as pointed by Arlindo Machado under the term “surveillance culture”. (Machado 1991) In this sense, a Latin America Surveillance Aesthetics exhibition is a way to propose, starting from the works presented here, a myriad of questions. How and to what extent do the destinies of surveillance devices reverberate or are subverted by market, security and media logics in our societies? If, in Europe and in the USA, surveillance is a subject related to the war against terror and border control, what can be said about Latin America? What forces and conflicts are involved? How have artistic practices been creating and acting in relation to these forces and conflicts? Successful panoramas of so called Surveillance Art already take place in Europe and North America for at least three decades, the exhibition “Surveillance”, at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions being one of the first initiatives in this domain. In Latin America however, art produced in the context of surveillance devices and processes is still seen as an isolated event. Our intention is to assemble a selection of works indicating the existence of a wider base of production, which cannot be considered eventual.The online exhibition can be accessed here.http://www.pec.ufrj.br/surveillanceaestheticslatina/
Zooveillance: Foucault Goes to the Zoo
Authors: Braverman Irus
Published: July 2018

The last three decades have witnessed a dramatic shift in the governance of North American zoo animals. During this period, captive animal administration has transformed from a materially, geographically, and technologically limited enterprise – focused on the control of individual zoo animals within specific North American zoo institutions – into an ambitious collective project that encompasses all accredited North American zoos and that governs over a million zoo animals. Tapping into a sophisticated voluntary and collaborative self-monitored administration, zoos have been able to rely upon genetics and demography to achieve the ultimate goal of captive animal conservation. The essay frames this story of animal governance as surveillance. It identifies three layers that work interdependently to produce captive animal surveillance in North American zoos: elementary surveillance, which includes the naming, identifying, and recording of captive animals on the institutional level; dataveillance, or the global computerized management of animal populations; and collective reproductive control. What underlies these three modes of surveillance – referred to here as “zooveillance” – are notions of care, stewardship, and conservation. Based on a series of sixty semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted with prominent zoo professionals in North America between May 2009 and April 2011, as well as on observations of zoo operations and of professional meetings, the essay explores the relevancy and importance of applying the framework of surveillance in the nonhuman context of zoo animals.
Perspectives on Privacy, Information Technology, and Company/Governmental Surveillance in Japan
Authors: Luther Catherine , Radovic Ivanka
Published: July 2018

The purpose of this study was to explore Japanese notions of privacy and perspectives on electronic surveillance carried out by companies and the government. Prior research has suggested fundamental differences between Eastern and Western viewpoints on privacy. Theoretical-based arguments have been put forward that in Eastern nations such as in Japan, culture plays a major role in downplaying the significance of privacy. Given the increasing usage of technology for surveillance purposes, this study hoped to shed light on whether or not such theoretical arguments are reflected in or diverge from the perspectives expressed by members of the Japanese public.
Invisible Surveillance in Visual Art
Authors: Barnard-Wills Katherine , Barnard-Wills David
Published: July 2018

Contemporary art has recently started to engage with surveillance. Before this trend developed art theory had developed a rangeof approaches to understanding identity in art, sometimes borrowing from social, psychoanalytic and political theory. Art work atthe intersection of surveillance and identity tends to focus upon the representation of the human body as subject of surveillanceand bearer of identity. However, contemporary surveillance is data, categorisation and flows of information as much as it isCCTV and images of the person. There are notably fewer works of art that engage with ‘dataveillance’. This paper engages withsuch artwork as a case study for assessing the suitability of contemporary art historical theories of identity to make sense ofidentity in a surveillance society.
The Future of Privacy Online
Authors: Et al. Huey
Published: July 2018

Full Text of the debate section on the future of online privacy featuring Laura Huey, Micheal Vonn, Reg Whitaker, Paul Rosenzweig, danah boyd, Steve T. Margulis, and Gary T. Marx, and Judith Rauhofer
Friendship and trust in the social surveillance network
Authors: Westcott Harriet , Owen Stephen
Published: July 2018

This article draws on findings from semi-structured interviews to investigate an important, and previously unexplored aspect of the social networking site Twitter, which is the ways that users can employ lateral surveillance to initiate friendships.  Social penetration theory (Altman and Taylor 1973) is used to investigate the ways that Twitter provides a platform to technologically augment friendship evolution.  Three consecutive phases of online surveillance are proposed, which are: unidirectional ‘studied’ following; ‘reciprocal’ following, when interaction between the user and the Tweeter only occurs online; and fully fledged friendship, when online relations are supplemented by offline meetings.  The visibility of users via their Tweets creates information that others can use to evaluate character in what might be considered a phase of pre-friendship screening, and that this also generates trust and solidarity prior to an offline meeting. Perceived similarity between the user and the Tweeter was contributory to an assessment of their worth as a potential friend.  Geographic proximity and ‘transferable trust’ were also factors that helped offline friendship to develop. Ultimately, Twitter was an important tool for sociality, and provided a wider source of potential friends than was available offline.
Welfare Surveillance, Income Management and New Paternalism in Australia
Authors: Dee Mike
Published: July 2018

This article discusses the situation of income support claimants in Australia, constructed as faulty citizens and flawed welfare subjects. Many are on the receiving end of complex, multi-layered forms of surveillance aimed at securing socially responsible and compliant behaviours. In Australia, as in other Western countries, neoliberal economic regimes with their harsh and often repressive treatment of welfare recipients operate in tandem with a burgeoning and costly arsenal of CCTV and other surveillance and governance assemblages. Through a program of ‘Income Management’, initially targeting (mainly) Indigenous welfare recipients in Australia’s Northern Territory, the BasicsCard (administered by Centrelink, on behalf of the Australian Federal Government’s Department of Human Services) is one example of this welfare surveillance. The scheme operates by ‘quarantining’ a percentage of a claimant’s welfare entitlements to be spent by way of the BasicsCard on ‘approved’ items only. The BasicsCard scheme raises significant questions about whether it is possible to encourage people to take responsibility for themselves if they no longer have real control over the most important aspects of their lives. Some Indigenous communities have resisted the BasicsCard, criticising it because the imposition of income management leads to a loss of trust, dignity, and individual agency. Further, income management of individuals by the welfare state contradicts the purported aim that they become less ‘welfare dependent’ and more ‘self-reliant’. In highlighting issues around compulsory income management this paper makes a contribution to the largely under discussed area of income management and the growth of welfare surveillance, with its propensity for function creep, garnering large volumes of data on users approved (and declined) purchasing decisions, complete with dates, amounts, times and locations.
Surveillance, security and sporting mega events: toward a research agenda on the organisation of security networks
Authors: Whelan Chad
Published: July 2018

Surveillance and security at sporting mega-events has been the subject of considerable recent scholarly attention. Sporting mega-events such as the Olympic Games and World Cup Football Finals have become occasions of almost unparalleled economic, political and social significance. In the lead up to the London 2012 Olympic Games, scholars have examined issues such as the ‘security legacies’ left by sporting mega-events, the infrastructures and technologies used in an attempt to secure these events, and the planning mentalities underpinning the staggering ‘security spectacle’ of sporting mega-events. This article deals with the subject of how surveillance and security practices at sporting mega-events are organised. It uses an emerging paradigm of ‘security networks’ to call attention to some of the important issues involving the entire ‘security assemblage’ that accompanies sporting mega-events. The article presents five levels of analysis – structural, cultural, policy, technological and relational – to examine these practices and present key areas for further research on sporting mega-events.
Gender verification in sport as a surveillance practice - inside and outside perception.
Authors: Jakubowska Honorata
Published: July 2018

The article analyzes gender verification of sportswomen as one of the surveillance practices present in sports. The main questions are: (1) Whose bodies are under surveillance? (2) What are the latent functions of the surveillance practices? (3) How are these practices perceived inside and outside the sport? The article is based on the author’s research - individual in-depth interviews with sportswomen, coaches and sports activists and representatives of feminist organizations. Its purpose is to draw attention to the issues of gender and sport, which are marginalized in the frame of surveillance studies.
The Problem with Ethics: Difficulties in Constructing Normative Frameworks
Authors: Huey Laura
Published: July 2018

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From self-tracking to smart urban infrastructures: towards an interdisciplinary research agenda on Big Data
Authors: Klauser Francisco R , Albrechtslund Anders
Published: July 2018

Recent debates on surveillance have emphasised the now myriad possibilities of automated, software-based data gathering, management and analysis. One of the many terms used to describe this phenomenon is ‘Big Data’. The field of Big Data covers a large and complex range of practices and technologies from smart borders to CCTV video analysis, and from consumer profiling to self-tracking applications. The paper’s aim is to explore the surveillance dynamics inherent in contemporary Big Data trends. To this end, the paper adopts two main perspectives concerned with two complementary expressions of Big Data: (1) the individual use of various techniques of self-surveillance and tracking and (2) the simultaneous trend to optimise urban infrastructures through smart information technologies. Drawing upon exploratory research conducted by the authors, the paper shows that both expressions of Big Data present a range of common surveillance dynamics on at least four levels: agency, temporality, spatiality and normativity. On these grounds, the paper highlights a series of important issues to explore in future research.
Why data is not enough: Digital traces as control of self and self-control
Authors: Reigeluth Tyler Butler
Published: July 2018

As an alternative to the seemingly natural objectivity and self-evidence of “data,” this paper builds on recent francophone literature by developing a critical conceptualization of “digital traces.” Underlining the materiality and discursiveness of traces allows us to understand and articulate both the technical and sociopolitical implications of digital technology. The philosophies of Gilbert Simondon and Michel Foucault give strong ontological and epistemological groundings for interpreting the relationships between technology and processes of subjectification. In this light, digital traces are framed as objects and products of heteronomous interventions, the logics of which can be traced through the programs and algorithms deployed. Through the empirical examples of “Predictive Policing” and “Quantified Self” digital traces are contrasted with the premises and dreams of Big Data. While the later claims to algorithmically correlative, predict and preempt the future by reducing it to a “what-is-to-come,” the digital trace paradigm offers a new perspective on how forms of self-control and control of the self are interdependent facets of “algorithmic governmentality.”
Creative Misuse as Resistance: Surveillance, Mobile Technologies, and Locative Games
Authors: Farman Jason
Published: July 2018

By focusing on loctive, mobile games that utilize GPS tracking in playful ways—from games such as geocaching and GPS::Tron to artistic GPS projects like Paula Levine’s San Francisco<>Baghdad and Jeremy Wood’s GPS drawings—this paper points to two key issues for the intersection of surveillance and games. First, I argue that games can creatively misuse surveillance technologies as a form of resistance. Second, such creative misuse creates a particular embodied relationship to surveillance, what I term the “sensory-inscribed body.” Ultimately, the sensory-inscribed body, through creative misuse of locative tracking technologies, demonstrates that surveillance space is not statically inscribed with meaning; instead, the meanings emerge through practice. Playful engagement reinscribes the possible meanings, positioning the embodied player not simply as an object of surveillance but instead as a creative misuser who brings together heterogeneous elements to reconfigure spatial relationships between people and surveillance technologies.
Game Studies meets Surveillance Studies at the Edge of Digital Culture: An Introduction to a special issue on Surveillance, Games and Play
Authors: Whitson Jennifer R. , Simon Bart
Published: July 2018

While we could attribute the close ties between surveillance and video games to their shared military roots, in this editorial we argue that the relationship goes much deeper to that. Even non-digital games such as chess require a mode of watchfulness: an attention to each piece in relation to the past, present, and future; a drive to predict an opponent’s movements; and, a distillation of the player-subject into a knowable finite range of possible actions defined by the rules. Games are social sorting, disciplinary, social control machines.In this introduction we tease apart some of the intersections of games and surveillance, beginning with a discussion of the NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden on using games to both monitor and influence unsuspecting populations. Next, we provide an overview of corporate data-gathering practices in games and further outline the production of manageable, computable subjectivities. Then, we show how the game Watch Dogs explores the surveillant capacities of games at both the game mechanical and representational scales. These three different facets of surveillance, games, and play set the scene for the special issue and the diverse articles that follow.  In the following pages we pose new lines of questioning that highlight the nuances of play and offer new modes of thinking about what games - and the processes of watching and being watched that are a foundational part of the experience – can tell us about surveillance.
Research Note: Surveillance in contemporary health and social care: friend or foe?
Authors: Morgan Heather May
Published: July 2018

Research note
The 'named person': surveillance and the wellbeing of children and young people in Scotland.
Authors: Stoddart Eric
Published: July 2018

The Scottish Parliament’s ‘Children and Young People’ Bill has extended statutory responsibilities for the welfare of children to include their well-being. This article focuses on the ‘named person’ service, arguing that an attenuated understanding of surveillance by politicians and other stakeholders has contributed to a failure to adequately consider the social control dimensions of this new universal provision.
Contesting a biopolitics of information and communications: The importance of truth and sousveillance after Snowden
Authors: Verde Garrido Miguelángel
Published: July 2018

This article aims to provide a novel conceptual understanding of the nature of the global mass surveillance policies and practices revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in collaboration with the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers. The critical analysis and conceptual reinterpretation of state and corporate surveillance and its impact on the political agency of civil society is multidisciplinary. An intersection of surveillance studies, political philosophy, and global politics/international relations provides an overview of the policies and practices that states and corporations develop and implement in relation to information and communications technologies (ICT). Clarifying how contemporary society is global and digital, it analyzes the way in which political economies inform contemporary policies and practices of surveillance. A critical analysis the relation of political economy to neoliberal governmentality, biopolitical technologies of power, and contemporary regimes of truth, leads to posit that global mass surveillance is a technology of power deployed by a contemporary biopolitics of information and communication. A conceptual reinterpretation of Foucault’s notion of parrhesia and Mann’s notion of sousveillance leads to posit that parrhesiastic sousveillance is a socio-political and technologically-enabled modality of resistance that can resemantize contemporary politics of truth and lead towards a newborn digital agency for global(ized) civil society.
Foucault, Surveillance and the Law of the Outside
Authors: Fitzpatrick Peter , Kender Philipp
Published: July 2018

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CCTV in Denmark 1954-1982
Authors: Lauritsen Peter , Feuerbach Andreas
Published: July 2018

The article describes how CCTV has evolved in Denmark from 1954, where it is first mentioned in a specialist journal, to 1982, where legislation is passed that regulates how CCTV can be used and by whom. The article identifies four technological frames in which CCTV is placed in the period. Three of these are ‘use-directed’ as they point to various ways of using CCTV and identify certain advantages and obstacles for this use. These three frames are ‘CCTV in industries’, ‘CCTV in traffic’, and ‘CCTV in security practices’. The fourth technological frame is critical towards using CCTV; it fears that the relationship between citizens and state is hampered and that the privacy of citizens is at risk. This technological frame is labeled ‘CCTV as a democratic threat’. The article shows how there have been various controversies between the different interpretations of CCTV. Thus, CCTV in Denmark has not evolved through linear and uncontested progression; in fact, CCTV has been at the centre of several controversies in which surveillance practices have been negotiated and regulated.
E-Fears, E-Risks and Citizen-Intelligence: Surveillance Impacts on Research and Confidentiality
Authors: Widener Patricia
Published: July 2018

This research note links the covert and overt chilling effects of cyber-surveillance on activist campaigns and on the social research of social movement actors in campaigns of resistance. Based on fieldwork in Aotearoa New Zealand during campaigns of resistance against offshore and onshore oil and gas proposals, this note explores how surveillance fears impact the public gatherings and information-sharing of citizen-activists and how the researcher may fail to ensure participant confidence and confidentiality, thereby becoming the researched and documented as well. The actions and commitments of both parties, the citizen-activist and the researcher of grassroots and social movements, may be strengthened or impeded by the degree of expected, though rarely verified, political and economic surveillance.
Slipping through the cracks: Background investigations after Snowden
Authors: Young Sarah
Published: July 2018

Although Edward Snowden set out to expose the extent of the United States (US) government’s surveillance practices so that the public would be aware of the magnitude of the country’s information gathering, Snowden’s actions have actually, at least in the case of background investigations, revealed an inability for the US government to gather all desired information for surveillance purposes. This lack of ability to gain access to information has several major consequences. First, it has created a call for more information to be gathered. It has also affected federal workers’ privacy and whistleblowing capabilities, encouraged a false trust in a fallible system, and has perpetuated the belief that the BI can actually capture the essence or “whole person” of an individual so much that it can tell the future.  All of these elements are problematic and help show how surveillance proliferates in modern society.
The Life of a Gunshot: Space, Sound and The Political Contours of Acoustic Gunshot Detection
Authors: Merrill Andrew
Published: July 2018

This article examines the implications of acoustic gunshot detection systems for the role of sound and nonhuman agencies in Surveillance Studies and their relationship to broader modes of power. This is done by examining the role of a ShotSpotter Flex Incident Report in the case of DeOnté Rawlings, a 14-year old black child shot and killed by an off-duty police officer in Washington, D.C. Through this case, this article traces the diagrams of power that imbricate this surveillance system within structural racism. In focusing on the material particularities of acoustical surveillance systems, like ShotSpotter Flex, this work also reconsiders the role of the visual in surveillance systems and Surveillance Studies. This article argues that these new configurations of sound and nonhuman agency offer a particular value to understanding the contemporary entanglement of surveillant mediums and broader regimes of power.
Records and rumors: Surveillance and information in late absolutist Denmark (1770-1849)
Authors: Skouvig Laura
Published: July 2018

This article investigates a part of the history of surveillance with a particular focus on surveillance strategies in late absolutist Denmark. It argues that for understanding the present perceptions of surveillance strategies surveillance has to be explored in different historical periods and cultures. From the perspective of information history the article understands surveillance as a strategy used by the information state and legitimized by either warfare or welfare. In the historical period of the Napoleonic wars the Danish absolutist government primarily focused on surveillance to control the population and less on surveillance for the benefit of the population.
Surveillance at the Roots of Everyday Interactions: Japan’s Conspiracy Bill and its Totalitarian Effects
Authors: Ogasawara Midori
Published: July 2018

Japan’s ultra-right wing government, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe since 2012, has been enforcing a number of controversial laws, such as the Secrecy Act and Security Act, which have enhanced surveillance and militarism. Without changing the Constitution, these laws allow the government to undermine the constitutional rights for individuals. The Conspiracy Law, Abe’s next attempt, focuses on placing people’s everyday communications under scrutiny. Against the modern principal of criminal justice, this law criminalizes the communications regarding crimes, without any criminal actions. Due to its extensively invasive character, the bill has been cancelled three times in the Diet in the past decade, but Abe insists that it is necessary for a successful running of 2020 Olympic in Tokyo as an anti-terror measure. While the Olympic gives the authoritarian government the best opportunity to incite nationalism and stabilize the rule, as the Nazi performed in 1936, surveillance comes forth to eliminate both public and private communications that question, criticize or counter the legitimacy of state power.
The Authoritarian Government of Angola learning High-Tech Surveillance
Authors: Fonseca Joana Bárbara
Published: July 2018

José Eduardo do Santos (JES), President of Angola, has been in charge since 1979, and is also the commander-in-chief of the FAA (Angola Armed Forces) and president of the MPLA, (the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, in charge of the country’s politics since 1975).Since 2011, inspired by the rise of the Arab Spring, some groups started group debates, trying to finding pacific ways to raise awareness to the authoritarian regime they were living. Consequently, the government dealt with them with extreme violence, using them as object-example of fear to whoever tried to oppose. In 2015, a group of 17 activists was arrested for reading a book in an open reunion, and accused of conspiring against JES’ government. One of the front men of this movement just spoke at the European Parliament in January 2017, though a month later he was suffering police violence again when joining a new manifestation in Luanda. In April 2017, a similar case happened to another group of activists, and the 7 remain in jail in poor health conditions.
Prolepticon: Anticipatory Citizen Surveillance of the Police
Authors: Singh Ajay
Published: July 2018

This paper introduces the concept of Prolepticon, describing anticipatory citizen surveillance of the police. Over the past four years, the spread of camera-enabled cellphones has allowed citizens to capture moments of police misconduct that previously would have remained unseen. The impact that this ubiquity of cellphone-wielding citizens has on policing is unclear. Former FBI Director James Comey suggests that the increased scrutiny on the actions of law enforcement through citizen video is causing police to retreat from policing, a phenomenon dubbed the YouTube Effect. I propose that as citizens continue to anticipate negative police-citizen encounters and record the interactions, and as officers internalize the potential of being surveilled by citizens, police are likely to moderate their behavior and engage in more professional policing. Through a series of case examples, I introduce the concept of Prolepticon using the Foucauldian lens of the Panopticon, providing a new paradigm to understand the impact of increased citizen surveillance of the police.
Social Injustice in Surveillance Capitalism
Authors: Cinnamon Jonathan
Published: July 2018

A rapidly accelerating phase of capitalism based on asymmetrical personal data accumulation poses significant concerns for democratic societies, yet the concepts used to understand and challenge practices of dataveillance are insufficient or poorly elaborated. Against a backdrop of growing corporate power enabled by legal lethargy and the secrecy of the personal data industry, this paper makes explicit how the practices inherent to what Shoshana Zuboff calls ‘surveillance capitalism’ are threats to social justice, based on the normative principle that they prevent parity of participation in social life. This paper draws on Nancy Fraser’s theory of ‘abnormal justice’ to characterize the separation of people from their personal data and its accumulation by corporations as an economic injustice of maldistribution. This initial injustice is also the key mechanism by which further opaque but significant forms of injustice are enabled in surveillance capitalism—sociocultural misrecognition which occurs when personal data are algorithmically processed and subject to categorization, and political misrepresentation which renders people democratically voiceless, unable to challenge misuses of their data. In situating corporate dataveillance practices as a threat to social justice, this paper calls for more explicit conceptual development of the social harms of asymmetrical personal data accumulation and analytics, and more hopefully, attention to the requirements needed to recast personal data as an agent of equality rather than oppression.
Crowdsourced Countersurveillance: A Countersurveillant Assemblage?
Authors: Wood Mark Andrew , Thompson Chrissy
Published: July 2018

Speed camera ‘traps’, random breath testing (RBT) stations, and other forms of mobile traffic surveillance have long been circumvented by motorists. However, as technologies for traffic surveillance have developed, so too have technologies enabling individuals to monitor and countersurveil these measures. One of the most recent forms of these countersurveillance platforms can be found on Facebook, where dedicated regional and national RBT and ‘police presence’ pages publicly post the locations of various forms of police surveillance in real-time. In this article, we argue that Facebook RBT pages exemplify a new form of social media facilitated countersurveillance we term crowdsourced countersurveillance: the use of knowledge-discovery and management crowdsourcing to facilitate surveillance discovery, avoidance, and countersurveillance. Crowdsourced countersurveillance, we argue, represents a form of countersurveillant assemblage: an ensemble of individuals, technologies, and data flows that, more than the sum of their parts, function together to neutralize surveillance measures. Facilitated by affordances for crowdsourcing, aggregating, and crowdmapping geographical data information on surveillance actors, crowdsourced countersurveillance provides a means of generating ‘hybrid heterotopias’: mediated counter-sites that enable individuals to contest and circumvent surveilled spatial arrangements.