Month: März 2008

Surveillance and Inequality, vol. 5 (3), edited by Torin Monahan
From the Editorial:

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 disciplining 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 often amplify existing social inequalities and reproduce regimes of control and/or exclusion of marginalized groups in societies.

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