[Air-l] CFP: Surveillance and Inequality (deadline: July 15, 2007)

[Torin Monahan]

[appologies for cross-posting]

Surveillance & Society – Call for Papers
Special Issue on Surveillance and Inequality: Issue 5(4)

(Guest editors: Torin Monahan and Jill A. Fisher)

Publication date: December 2007

Deadline for submissions: 15 July 2007

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 
discipline 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 appear to 
amplify existing social inequalities and 
establish rationales for increased control of marginalized groups in societies.

The journal Surveillance & Society is seeking 
papers that examine issues of surveillance and 
inequality.  The editors are especially 
interested in research papers that address the 
differential effects of surveillance upon 
marginalized and privileged social 
groups.  Whereas surveillance studies inquiry 
often begins with technology as a starting point 
for analysis, we welcome papers that start with 
descriptions of power relations in any social 
settings and then move to illustrate the role of 
surveillance technologies or practices in the 
regulation of those settings.  We further 
encourage contributions that theorize the 
relationship of the political economy to 
surveillance and inequality, whether by attending 
to globalization processes, neoliberal policies, 
or military operations.  Finally, we are also 
quite interested in papers that seek to 
demonstrate or theorize the empowering potential 
of surveillance systems to correct social inequalities.

Possible papers could investigate the role of surveillance in:

    * The regulation of gender or status relations in places of employment.
    * Socio-spatial segregation in cities, 
suburbs, exurbs, or rural communities.
    * The restructuring or elimination of public 
programs and spaces (or citizen rights) by 
neoliberal policies – which could include a focus 
on schools, welfare, healthcare, voting, etc.
    * Racial or ethnic profiling by police, 
security personnel, or immigration agents.
    * The enforcement of differential mobilities 
(along with inquiry into the relationship of 
mobilities to the life chances and well-being of travelers).
    * The automatic prioritizing of services, 
rights, and mobilities in software-sorted service domains.
    * The control of women’s bodies, especially in regard to reproduction.
    * Monitoring of children or the elderly – or 
the monitoring of those charged with taking care of them.
    * The militarization of borders and the 
corresponding dangers faced by undocumented immigrants, refugees, and others.

Submissions should be sent electronically to 
Emily Smith, at smithea at post.queensu.ca by 15 
July 2007 with a publication date of December 2007.

We welcome full academic papers, opinion pieces, 
review pieces, poetry, artistic, and audio-visual 
submissions.  Submissions will undergo a 
peer-review and revision process prior to 
publication.  Submissions should be original 
work, neither previously published nor under 
consideration for publication elsewhere.  All 
references to previous work by contributors 
should be masked in the text (e.g., “Author, 
2007”).  Please see: 
www.surveillance-and-society.org/call.htm for further submission guidelines.

Torin Monahan
Assistant Professor
Arizona State University
School of Justice & Social Inquiry
torin.monahan at asu.edu | www.torinmonahan.com