Surveillance Studies: A Reader - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0190297824 ISBN 13: 9780190297824

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2018

Synopsis

Surveillance is everywhere: in workplaces monitoring the performance of employees, social media sites tracking clicks and uploads, financial institutions logging transactions, advertisers amassing fine-grained data on customers, and security agencies siphoning up everyone's telecommunications activities. Surveillance practices-although often hidden-have come to define the way modern institutions operate. Because of the growing awareness of the central role of surveillance in shaping power relations and knowledge across social and cultural contexts, scholars from many different academic disciplines have been drawn to "surveillance studies," which in recent years has solidified as a major field of study.

Torin Monahan and David Murakami Wood's Surveillance Studies is a broad-ranging reader that provides a comprehensive overview of the dynamic field. In fifteen sections, the book features selections from key historical and theoretical texts, samples of the best empirical research done on surveillance, introductions to debates about privacy and power, and cutting-edge treatments of art, film, and literature. While the disciplinary perspectives and foci of scholars in surveillance studies may be diverse, there is coherence and agreement about core concepts, ideas, and texts. This reader outlines these core dimensions and highlights various differences and tensions. In addition to a thorough introduction that maps the development of the field, the volume offers helpful editorial remarks for each section and brief prologues that frame the included excerpts.

Including 78 classic and contemporary texts, Surveillance Studies is the definitive introduction to this vibrant and growing field and an essential resource for scholars.

About this title

About the Author

Torin Monahan is Professor of Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-Editor-in-Chief of Surveillance & Society. His most recent books include SuperVision: An Introduction to the Surveillance Society and Surveillance in the Time of Insecurity.

David Murakami Wood is Canada Research Chair in Surveillance Studies and Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at Queens University in Ontario. He is also co-founder and Managing Editor of Surveillance & Society and co-founder and trustee of the Surveillance Studies Network (SSN).

From the Back Cover

"Surveillance studies has arrived! Monahan and Murakami Wood have identified the multiple paths through which this critically important discipline has found its way to the center of our attention. One can't help but be impressed and grateful for the historic contribution they have made."

--Oscar Gandy, Professor Emeritus, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

"This book is an absolute gem. The editors, key scholars in this transdisciplinary field, have not only brought together these essential contributions in one volume, they have done so meticulously and skillfully. Each section, introduced by the editors, is topically organized and, when read sequentially, offers the reader an insightful mapping of this dynamic and evolving intellectual journey."

--William G. Staples, Professor of Sociology and Director, Surveillance Studies Research Center, University of Kansas

"With this carefully curated collection of essays, Torin Monahan and David Murakami Wood provide not only an entry into surveillance studies - its historical valences as well as contemporary scholarship within the field - but also offer us the urgently needed theory and tools required to think about the concept of surveillance in our classrooms, at borders, and at the various sites that surveillance complicates our social lives. This wide ranging book will shape many important discussions to come."

--Simone Browne, Department of African & African Diaspora Studies, The University of Texas at Austin

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0190297824
• ISBN 13: 9780190297824
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 456
• Editor: Monahan Torin