Discourses and Technologies of Surveillance in the United States 4219-SH0042
From the ways we spend money to the ways we socialize, and from how we travel to how we wage war, surveillance has transformed our lives. Students in this class will learn to critically engage the most important surveillance-based developments in the U.S. The course emphasizes the way that existing social institutions, the government, the military, and corporations have evolved in the face of emerging surveillance technologies. The course will examine social and political changes in terms of their connection to developments in surveillance technologies and discourses. Ethical and political questions will be emphasized.
Type of course
Mode
Prerequisites (description)
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Knowledge:
*Student has a knowledge of history and theory of American surveillance.
* Student is able to define main concepts of surveillance and can apply them in discourse
* Student identifies key technologies in the development of surveillance and explains their significance
*Student has in-depth knowledge of the social, economic, and cultural impact of surveillance
Skills:
* Student can critically analyze surveillance technologies and the discourses used to justify them
*Student identifies how different political systems deploy surveillance
*Student develops skills to gather, select and structure information to defend one's position
* Student critically approaches texts from the discipline
Social competences:
* Student participates in group work and can arrange it skillfully
*Student develops one's political education to consent or not consent to surveillance technologies in an ethical manner
*Student is ready for critical reception of surveillance discourses and technologies
Assessment criteria
1. Critical article review (25 pt)
2. Final essay (35 pt)
3. Feedback on class reading (10)
4. Attendance and active participation (10 pt)
Grading: 100-88/5; 87-73/4; 72-57/3; 56-0/2
Bibliography
Albrechtslund, “Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance”
Amoore, “Biometric Borders”
Andrejevic, “Surveillance in the Digital Enclosure”
Andrejevic and Burdon, “Defining the Sensor Society”
Foucault, “Panopticism”
Fuchs, “Web 2.0, Prosumption, and Surveillance”
Greenwald, “No Place to Hide”
Han, “Inside the Digital Panopticon”
Han, “Only What is Dead is Transparent”
Han, “The Total Exploitation of the Human Being”
Han, “Why Revolution is Impossible Today”
Mathiesen, “The Viewer Society”
Mattelart, “War Without End: The Techno-Security Paradigm”
Packer, “Epistemology, Not Ideology”
Packer and Reeves, “The Third Revolution” and “Anthropophobia and Military Autonomy”
Tornberg and Uitermark, “Complex Control and the Governmentality of Digital Platforms”
Zuboff, “Home or Exile in the Digital Future?”
Information on course edition: all readings are made available in PDF format
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: