Surveillance Studies: A Reader

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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.