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This edited collection reports the results of a comparative study of video surveillance/CCTV in Germany, Poland, and Sweden. It investigates how video surveillance as technologically mediated social control is affected by national characteristics, with a specific concern for recent political history. The book is motivated by asking what makes video surveillance "tick" in three very different cultural settings, two of which (Poland and Sweden) are virtually unexplored in the literature on surveillance. The selection of countries is motivated by an interest in societies with recent experiences of authoritarianism, and how they respond to the global trend towards intensified technical means of control. With thorough empirical studies, the book constitutes an important contribution to security studies, surveillance studies, and post-communist area studies.
This book offers one of the most comprehensive studies of social pathology to date, following a cross-disciplinary and methodologically innovative approach. It is written for anyone concerned with understanding current social conditions, individual health, and how we might begin to collectively conceive of a more reconciled postcapitalist world. Drawing reference from the most up-to-date studies, Smith crosses disciplinary boundaries from cognitive science and anthropology to critical theory, systems theory and psychology. Opening with an empirical account of numerous interlinked carises from mental health to the physiological effects of environmental pollution, Smith argues that mainstream ...
An important review of opinions about surveillance and privacy.
This book brings into focus the ways in which the implementation of cameras and systems, and their operation and technical features, are the product of decisions and policies made ina variety of contexts and by a variety of authorities and interested parties. It examines the cultural contextin which cameras are deployed and explores how this context can shape their diffusion and use. The bookplaces particular emphasis on studies of video surveillance in different national, institutional, cultural andlinguistic settings.pIOS Press is an international science, technical and medical publisher of high-quality books for academics
Surveillance and transparency are both significant and increasingly pervasive activities in neoliberal societies. Surveillance is taken up as a means to achieving security and efficiency; transparency is seen as a mechanism for ensuring compliance or promoting informed consumerism and informed citizenship. Indeed, transparency is often seen as the antidote to the threats and fears of surveillance. This book adopts a novel approach in examining surveillance practices and transparency practices together as parallel systems of accountability. It presents the house of mirrors as a new framework for understanding surveillance and transparency practices instrumented with information technology. The volume centers around five case studies: Campaign Finance Disclosure, Secure Flight, American Red Cross, Google, and Facebook. A series of themed chapters draw on the material and provide cross-case analysis. The volume ends with a chapter on policy implications.
This book explores the inherent tension in civic education. There is a surging belief in contemporary European society that liberal democracy should work harder to reproduce the civic and normative setups of national populations through public education. The cardinal notion is that education remains the best means to accomplish this end, and educational regimes appropriate tools to make the young more tolerant, civic, democratic, communal, cosmopolitan, and prone to engaged activism. This book is concerned with the ambiguities that strain standard visions of civic education and educational statehood. On the one hand, civic-normative education is expected to drive tolerance in the face of con...
In times of global capitalist crisis we are witnessing a return of critique in the form of a surging interest in critical theories (such as the critical political economy of Karl Marx) and social rebellions as a reaction to the commodification and instrumentalization of everything. On one hand, there are overdrawn claims that social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc) have caused uproars in countries like Tunisia and Egypt. On the other hand, the question arises as to what actual role social media play in contemporary capitalism, crisis, rebellions, the strengthening of the commons, and the potential creation of participatory democracy. The commodification of everything has resulted also...
First Published in 2007. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
The Fukushima Effect offers a range of scholarly perspectives on the international effect of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown four years out from the disaster. Grounded in the field of science, technology and society (STS) studies, a leading cast of international scholars from the Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the United States examine the extent and scope of the Fukushima effect. The authors each focus on one country or group of countries, and pay particular attention to national histories, debates and policy responses on nuclear power development covering such topics as safety of nuclear energy, radiation risk, nuclear waste management, development of nuclear energy, anti-nuclear protest...
This book gives an account of how the U.S. freight transportation system has been impacted and “globalized,” since the 1950s, by the presence of the shipping container. A globally standardized object, the container carries cargo moving in international trade, and it utilizes and fits within the existing transportation infrastructures of shipping, trucking and railroads. In this way it binds them together into a nearly seamless worldwide logistics network. This process occurs not only in ocean shipping and at ports, but also deep within national territories. In its dependence on existing infrastructural systems, though, the network of container movement as it pervades domestic space is sh...