This open issue offers eight original articles on topics ranging from workplace surveillance, student monitoring, predictive policing, humanitarian screening, AI problematics, and pandemic surveillance. The issue also includes three book reviews.

Cover image: “Woman looking through magnifying glass with numbers.” (AI generated.) Image attribution: Jtneill via Wikimedia Commons.)

This special issue on “Pleasures of Surveillance” features both scholarly and artistic contributions that examine the fraught relationship between surveillance and pleasure. The issue includes an editorial introduction and a wide range of articles, reviews, and an artist interview.

Cover image: “Stalk Me to the End of Love” by Victoria Ascaso. Reprinted with permission. This artwork is discussed in the “Stalk Me to the End of Love” piece appearing in this issue.

This issue offers a selection of peer-reviewed papers from the 2022 Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) conference in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. It also includes contributions from SSN Arts Prize winners and honorable mentions for the past two award cycles. Finally, the issue concludes with a research note and four book reviews.

Cover image: “Homemade satellite dishes series. Image from soil video art, 5:23’, 2019” by Elham Fatapour. Reprinted with permission. This artwork is discussed in the “Surveillance and Self-Censorship” piece appearing in this issue.

The surveillance implications of artificial intelligence warrant sustained critical investigation. Authors in this issue begin to take up this challenge through their exploratory contributions to a special themed section on “AI & Surveillance.” The issue also offers three regular articles and six book reviews.

Cover image: “Plant by Alan Warburton” presents a representation of fragmented AI vision of a houseplant. (Image attribution: Alan Warburton via Wikimedia Commons.)

This open issue offers a selection of six articles, two book reviews, one research note, and one “in memoriam” piece for the late Elia Zureik.

Cover image: “Illustration depicting the use of Pegasus to spy on politicians, former government workers and activists by the Israel Police.” (Image attribution: Gibrán Aquino via Wikimedia Commons.)

This open issue features a Dialogue section offering international perspectives on “Surveillance in Conflict and Crisis.” The issue also includes five regular articles on topics ranging from erotics in King Lear, state control of Indigenous populations, workplace surveillance during COVID, parental tracking of children, and visualizations of smart cities. The issue concludes with three book reviews.

Cover image: Children of War (Banksy). (Image attribution: Rasal Hague via Wikimedia Commons.)

This special issue celebrates the journal’s twentieth anniversary. It includes some of the leading figures and rising new voices in surveillance studies, each reflecting on contributions made by the field, key challenges now facing it, or ways that surveillance studies has permeated into other academic disciplines and discourses. The colloquial tone of many of these essays is by design, for we wanted to mark the fact that we are in the middle of an ongoing conversation—one that we eagerly invite others to participate in and extend.

Cover image: Kassandra Wellendorf and Kristin Veel’s HomeCTRL (forthcoming installation) at The Danish Museum of Science & Technology. Photograph by Mia Mai Dengsø Graabæk. Reprinted with permission. This artwork is discussed in the “HomeCTRL” essay appearing in this issue.

This open issue begins with four original articles on topics including skate-stoppers, counterterrorism training sessions, automated license plate recognition systems, and race-identified COVID-19 data. Next, it offers a special dialogue section on “Privacy Studies, Surveillance Law.” Finally, the issue concludes with a selection of book reviews.

Cover image: “Mariah Davenport hits the kicker at Martinez Playground - Blue Park.” (Image attribution: Erin Patrice O'Brien via Wikimedia Commons.) Skateboarder surveillance is analyzed by Duncan McDuie-Ra and Jason Campbell in this issue’s opening article.

This open issue offers a selection of five articles, eight book reviews, and two arts forum contributions.

Cover image: Katrina Andry, The Unfit Mommy and Her Spawn Will Wreck Your Comfortable Suburban Existence. Reprinted with permission. This artwork is discussed by Sarah Koellner in her arts forum essay in this issue.

This open issue offers a selection of original research articles, one COVID-19 article, six book reviews, and two special arts forum contributions.

Cover image: Sara Matthews, installation view, The Cultural Life of Drones, Conrad Grebel Gallery, 2019. Reprinted with permission. This artwork is discussed in the “Art in Conversation” dialogue piece appearing in this issue.

This special issue on “Imagining Surveillance Futures” explores what surveillance might look like—and what worlds it might engender—in the near future. Harnessing speculative fiction and visual art, the issue’s essays immerse audiences in dystopian and utopian scenarios that offer new perspective on the stakes of surveillance in society. The issue includes an editorial introduction, fourteen essays, two arts forum pieces, one regular article (with a Mandarin translation), and two book reviews.

Cover image: Installation view of “Persuasive System,” Lugano, Piazza Manzoni, 2020. Photograph by Salvatore Vitale, reprinted with permission. This artwork is discussed by Philip Di Salvo and Salvatore Vitale in their contribution in this issue.

This open issue features a Dialogue section offering international perspectives on “Domestic Terrorism, White Supremacy, and State Surveillance.” The issue also includes three regular articles, one COVID-19 article, and three book reviews.

Cover image: Domestic extremists storm the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. Source: Blink O'fanaye (flickr).

This special issue, edited by David Murakami Wood and Valerie Steeves, explores problematics of “smart surveillance” across a variety of contexts. The issue offers an introductory editorial, six articles, four opinion pieces, an interview, and four book reviews.

Cover image: “Living room of an intelligent building.” (Image attribution: Jan Prucha via Wikimedia Commons)

This open issue marks the one-year point since COVID-19 was officially recognized as a global pandemic. This has been a deadly year with disastrous effects for communities around the world. The pandemic (and societal responses to it) has also had significant implications for scholarship in general and surveillance studies in particular. To begin to grapple with some of these implications, this issue offers an introductory editorial on COVID-19, racial violence, and transparency and a dedicated Dialogue section on “Surveillance and the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Alongside those works, the issue also contains five open-issue articles, one COVID-19-themed article, five book reviews, and one Arts Forum essay.

Cover image: “Spring Break vs. COVID-19,” Tectonix, 2020. Image used with permission. This visualization is discussed in the issue’s opening editorial.

This open issue provides an impressive snapshot of the transdisciplinary breadth of the field. It includes seven original articles on topics as diverse as professional drone use, Indigenous surveillance cinema, informant memoirs, covert police surveillance, Tor users, police use of visual data, and workplace surveillance. The issue also offers five book reviews.

Cover image: Terril Calder, SNIP, 2016. (Reprinted with permission.) This film is discussed by Joshua Miner in his article in this issue.

This open issue offers seven original articles on a wide range of topics, including critical artwork, digital personal assistants, body-worn cameras and race, lateral surveillance among students, national security, and more. Additionally, the issue presents a robust dialogue section debating “surveillance as evidence,” a COVID-19 opinion piece, and six book reviews.

Cover image: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, “Level of Confidence,” 2015. Photo by: Antimodular Research. (Reprinted with permission.) This artwork is analyzed by Claudio Celis in his opening article in this issue.

This open issue offers a timely dialogue section on resistance and sousveillance, with several of the contributions exploring the politics of filming racialized police violence. Additionally, the issue includes seven original articles and three book reviews.

Cover image: Black Lives Matter Rally in Eugene, Oregon, on May 31, 2020. (Image attribution: dsgetch via Wikimedia Commons)

We begin this issue with a special editorial on surveillance studies and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Next, we offer a diverse collection of open-issue articles and book reviews. Finally, we are delighted to conclude the issue by launching our new “Arts Forum” section and showcasing some of the winning artworks from SSN’s inaugural Arts Prize.

Cover image: “Concern in China as Mystery Virus Spreads,” by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images.

This special issue, guest edited by Gary Kafer and Daniel Grinberg, explores the productive resonances and tensions between surveillance studies and queer studies. The issue also launches our new Dialogue section with a set of provocations for “decolonizing surveillance studies.”

The cover image is of millimeter wave technology scans by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration. (Image attribution: TSA via Wikimedia Commons.)

This special issue, guest edited by Keith Spiller and Xavier L'Hoiry, investigates the blurring of boundaries between police and publics, particularly with respect to citizen-based policing schemes. In addition to an editorial introduction and nine curated articles, the issue includes nine regular articles and a number of book reviews.

The cover image is of a Neighborhood Crime Watch sign along Southside Drive in Elko, Nevada, USA. (Image attribution: Famartin via Wikimedia Commons.)

This special responsive issue on “Platform Surveillance” critically assesses the surveillance dimensions and politics of large-scale digital platforms. The issue includes an editorial introduction to the topic and its implications, dozens of articles on specific platforms or platform trends, three book reviews of Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, and an interview with Zuboff about her work.

The cover image is of a Google StreetView car in Finland. (Image attribution: petterijokela via Wikimedia Commons.) [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Google_Streetview_car,_Finland,_30_May_2017.jpg]

This special issue, guest edited by Eric Stoddart and Susanne Wigorts Yngvesson, explores the implications of surveillance for religious practices. The issue also includes a debate between David Lyon and James M. Harding about the potentials and pitfalls of Christian beliefs guiding scholarly inquiry into surveillance. 

The cover image is of a Haram al-Sharif / Temple Mount Israeli checkpoint in the Old City of Jerusalem, as described in Lior Volinz’s article in this issue. (Image attribution: Jj M Ḥtp [CC0] via Wikimedia Commons.)

This special issue, guest edited by Ola Svenonius and Fredrika Björklund, investigates Surveillance in Post-Communist Societies. It includes an editorial introduction, five original articles, and a postscript by Maria Los. Additionally, the issue offers a research notes piece and a selection of book reviews.

The cover image is an iconic representation of people on the Berlin Wall by the Brandenburg Gate in November 1989. (Image attribution: Sue Ream via Wikimedia Commons)

This open issue offers a selection of original research articles, representing some of the diversity of the field. These include humanities-inflected analyses of films and novels, critical explorations of social regulation and shame in online environments, social science investigation of counter-surveillance dynamics with protest movements, and philosophical inquiry into the legacy of cold war surveillance systems. The issue concludes with four book reviews.

The cover image comes from Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Revolution,” which is discussed in Karen Fang’s lead article in this issue. (Image attribution: melanie_ko [Umbrella Revolution] via Wikimedia Commons)

This first open issue of 2018 presents a variety of contextually grounded articles on surveillance dynamics. The pieces range from the negotiation of police traffic cameras, to resistance to state intelligence programs, to counter-hooliganism schemes at sporting arenas, to gendered subjectivities cultivated and mediated by film. The issue also includes ten new book reviews. 

The cover image is of a generic traffic camera sign used in multiple countries. (Image attribution: Jftsang at English Wikipedia, via Wikimedia Commons.)

This final open issue of 2017 includes articles interrogating various forms of hidden or unanticipated surveillance. These range from the “surveillance capitalism” regimes of big data companies, to police and employment discrimination based on supposedly neutral indicators of one’s character, to anticipatory citizen filming of police violence. The issue also offers seven book reviews.

The cover image comes from an 1890 rendition of “The Rogue’s Gallery” located at a police station in Minneapolis. This image and the racial politics of early police classification schemes are analyzed in Freda L. Fair’s article in this issue.

This is also the first issue published under the new editorship of Torin Monahan. The Editorial Board gives profound thanks to David Murakami Wood for his 15 years of exemplary service to the journal as the Editor-in-Chief and one of the Founding Editors.

Edited by David Murakami Wood.

This is our first ever special "Responsive Issue," conceived of as something extra to our usual process of publication. We asked for shorter articles, written in a more punchy and accessible style, to cover specific countries which are moving in an authoritarian direction, and/or transnational issues that relate to the nexus of surveillance and authoritarianism.  We would like to thank all of the authors and reviewers who rose so quickly to the challenge.

The cover image is of stencil graffiti spotted in London in 2017. #FreeAhmed refers to Ahmed Mansoor (or Mansour), the Emirati human rights defender currently serving ten years in prison for his views on the authoritarian government of the UAE (see Manu Luksch's interview with Mansoor which concludes this issue).  

This issue is dedicated to Ahmed Mansoor, to the late Liu Xiaobo and Berta Caceres, and to all those countless dedicated and courageous people who risk their freedom and their lives to oppose authoritarianism and oppression.

We're delighted to present another packed issue covering a wide range of ground from surveillance theory and critique, through subjectivities and public opinion, to surveillance history. There are are also six book reviews, which are also available in one document here: http://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/manager/files/Books_Open2017.pdf

Welcome to the first issue of 2017, the beginning of our 15th volume, 'Race, Communities and Informers', guest-edited by Simone Browne (University of Austin at Texas), Katherine Mckittrick (Queen's University, Ontario) and Ronak K. Kapadia (University of Illinois at Chicago). Simone Browne, who was recently awarded the Surveillance Studies Network book prize for her work, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, contributes the editorial.

Speaking of awards, also in this issue, it is also entirely appropriate that we recognise the pioneering achievements of Oscar Gandy, the great African-American scholar of Surveillance Studies, who has spent his career drawing attention to the racial and other inequities of what he called 'the panoptic sort'. We present a piece based on the speech he gave in response to receiving the 2016 Distinguished Scholar Award of the SSN.

We also have three more papers in response to our call on 'Surveillance after Security Intelligence After Snowden', edited by David Murakami Wood and Steve Wright (the first part can be found here) and finally, a selection of reviews of recent books in Surveillance Studies (the reviews can aslo be downloaded as a single file.)

edited by Rachel Hall, Torin Monahan and Joshua Reeves

Featuring a debate on Police Body-Worn Cameras, which can be downloaded in full here: ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/editor/downloadFile/6279/13883

Papers from the Surveillance Studies Network / Surveillance & Society Biennial Conference, Barcelona 2014.

Edited by Rosamunde van Brakel, Liliana Arroyo Moliner and Gemma Galdon Clavell

The first part of an themed issue on Surveillance and Security Intelligence After Snowden, edited by David Murakami Wood and Steve Wright... and much more! This issue also contains a Debate Section on Law and Surveillance, edited by Randy Lippert. The full debate section can also be downloaded from here.

Edited by Sachil Singh, Harrison Smith and Scott Thompson

edited by Jennifer R. Whitson and Bart Simon

edited by Mark Andrejevic and Kelly Gates

This issue includes a debate section based around Kevin Macnish's article, Just Surveillance?. The full text of this debate and all the responses can be downloaded as one file here.

This section was edited by Laura Huey, and it will sadly be her last as S&S Debates Editor. We would like to thank her very much for her excellent work, and also welcome our new Debates Editor, Randy Lippert.

Edited by Ian Warren and Nils Zurawski.

This issue is a selection of papers derived from the activities of The University of Sydney’s Surveillance and Everyday Life Research Group. The editorial committee identified the following thematic as the substantive focus of the edition, namely: climates of distrust (distrust of subjects, distrust of ideology, distrust of authority etc.), desires for truth-making and cultural circuits of surveillance texts. It was felt that a critical exploration of this topic was a novel intellectual contribution to the surveillance studies field and would prove fascinating/pertinent subject-matter for a special edition.

In many ways, the need for ‘truth making’ and ‘truth adjudication’ technologies accentuates in organizational contexts defined by technocratic and bureaucratized principles and in socio-cultural contexts defined by increasing levels of uncertainty, distrust, complexity and inequity. In times of rapid global change, object-subject mobility, resource scarcity, scientific development, contingency governance, identity politics, anxiety and scepticism, surveillance systems/texts are used by agents for multiple ends. They are appropriated to envision social relations, establish truths, order populations, dispose resources, identify undesired social conditions, visualize utopian solutions, preempt unknown futures, craft identities and foster new varieties of social connectivity. Thus, this special issue of Surveillance & Society will focus analysis on the affinities existing among cultures of distrust, desires for truth-making and surveillance text circulation. It will indirectly address the following questions: Do surveillance systems (and related truth-making practices) reduce or increase relations of distrust and cultures of insecurity? What kinds of cultural knowledge can be derived from the analysis of surveillance texts in differing contexts? What is the political economic and legal value of surveillance texts? Are surveillance texts - as truth statements - themselves subject to currencies of trust/distrust? How are surveillance texts constructed and whose interests do they serve? What types of labour are invested in the manufacturing and processing of surveillance texts and how is this work remunerated? What kinds of social relations do surveillance platforms foster? How do subjects appropriate surveillance technologies to generate culturally specific surveillance texts? What other cultural values are embodied and emerge in surveillance texts? How might surveillance texts be used to craft social identities?

 

The Editorial Committee

Dr Gavin Smith, Department of Sociology, The Australian National University

Associate Prof Peter Marks, Department of English, The University of Sydney

Harriet Westcott, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, The University of Sydney

Mehera San Roque, School of Law, The University of New South Wales

Associate Prof Stephen Robertson, Department of History, The University of Sydney

 

The photos accompanying the article, 'Covert' by Carolyn McKay can be seen on the Surveillance & Society photostream at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/surveillance_and_society/sets/72157638275795465/

Edited by Kirstie Ball, Clive Norris and David Murakami Wood.

This is a double issue featuring both papers from open submission and papers originally presented at the 5th Biannual Surveillance Studies Network / Surveillance & Society Conference, 'Watch This Space? Surveillance Futures', organized by Kirstie Ball, Ben Goold, Nicky Green, Clive Norris and Charles Raab.

This double issue is the final issue in the first decade of Surveillance & Society. 2012 was in many ways something of a milestone year for Surveillance Studies for it also saw the release of the enormous Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies, reviewed in this issue by Steve Wright.

Along with nine new articles, this double issue also features an extended Debate section, under our new Debates Editor, Laura Huey, continuing to engage with the privacy challenge laid down by Colin Bennett in issue 8(4), and considering the question of Online Privacy.

The full text is available here (or by clicking on the link under the individual contributions).

This issue is accompanied by an online exhibition which is connected to the article by Fernanda Bruno, Paola Barreto and Milena Szafir.

http://www.pec.ufrj.br/surveillanceaestheticslatina/

This is a double issue in which most of the articles were initially presented at the 2010 Surveillance Studies Network / Surveillance & Society conference, A Global Surveillance Society?. The conference was held jointly with the European Science Foundation's COST initiative, Living in Surveillance Socities (LiSS), at City University in London. Different aspects of the conference were organised by Gavin Smith, Kirstie Ball, Clive Norris and William Webster, and thanks and acknowledgements go out to them all.

Featuring a special debate section, with Colin Bennett, Pris Regan, John Gilliom, danah boyd and Felix Stalder discussing Bennett's essay, In Defense of Privacy.

The debate can also be downloaded as a single file here.

edited by Jason Pridmore and Detlev Zwick