CFP: Democracy & Surv. Technologies, ISA Buenos Aires

ISA Forum in Buenos Aires, Argentina August 1-4 2012. As usual, there will be a session on surveillance within the Research Committee 23 on the Sociology of Science and Technology. Abstract deadline is 15 December 2011.

The International Sociological Association Forum wil be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina August 1-4 2012. As usual, there will be a session on surveillance within the Research Committee 23 on the Sociology of Science and Technology. Please send abstracts online (http://www.isa-sociology.org/buenos-aires-2012/rc/rc.php?n=RC23) by December 15 2011. Feel free to copy what you send to Nelson Arteaga Botello (arbnelson[at]yahoo.com) and David Lyon (lyond[at]queensu.ca).

Democracy and surveillance technologies: Relationships between global South and global North

Organisers:
David LYON, Queen’s University, Canada
Nelson ARTEAGA, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, Mexico

The session seeks to understand the impact of surveillance society in the reconfiguration of relationships between global South and global North. It will focus primarily on analyzing the way in which nation states in both regions establish an interchange of personal or group information collected by different forms of surveillance as such as census, ID cards, population and migrants. This starting point allows the articulation of particular questions: How do the governments in the global North and South organize legal regulation regarding consent of the flows of information? What is the global process of transference of surveillance technology, and “know how” skills of surveillance?

These questions are important because they open a new reconfiguration of citizenship, the public and private, and the manner in which social sorting occurred. Cross national studies are important to comprehend the effects of surveillance between national states in global north and global south. Which is the impact in the construction of democratic institutions in both regions? The session particularly welcomes cross national studies of different types of surveillance and papers which relate to the development of surveillance institutions in Latin America.