Surveillance & Society
Course Syllabus
Arizona State University
JUS 494 (65609) – Fall 2004
Tuesday & Thursday 3:15 – 4:30
Location: BAC 324
Instructor
Office: Wilson 314
Phone: 480-965-4522
Email:
Office Hours: T/TH 1:45-2:45 & by appt.
Course Description
How are surveillance technologies altering social life in post-9/11 worlds? This course will explore this question by mapping the complex ways that technologies and societies interact to produce security, fear, control, and/or vulnerability. Some of the areas covered include anti-terrorism legislation, close-circuit television (CCTV) in public and quasi-public spaces, biometric technologies on the border, and a host of monitoring technologies in cyberspaces, workplaces, and the home. Readings will be drawn from the social sciences, science-fiction, and popular media. Several films will be shown to facilitate critical inquiry into the shaping of popular perceptions about the future and our role in its creation. The class is designed to give students freedom to develop and express their own ideas. The course goal is for you to cultivate a technological literacy that will allow you to analyze and critique surveillance technologies as social entities.
Required Texts
1. Levin, Thomas Y. 2002. CTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother.
2. McAuley, Paul J. 2003. Whole Wide World.
Grading
| On-line Journal | 20% |
| Paper #1 | 15% |
| Paper #2 | 15% |
| Final Team Project | 30% |
| Participation | 20% |
(a full letter grade system will be used in this course, not +/-)
Course Expectations
Attendance: This class will be conducted with a focus on lectures, activities, and in-class discussions. Because of this format, you are strongly encouraged to attend all classes. Formal attendance will not be taken, but your participation grade will suffer if you are excessively absent or tardy. You must turn in assignments ahead of time and arrange to get notes from a colleague if you are going to be absent. Finally, if you fail to show up for a scheduled meeting with the instructor without cancelling 24 hours in advance, your participation grade will be docked 5 points.
Reading: Complete all readings (and other assignments) prior to the class meeting for which they are scheduled. Most of the readings will be drawn from the required texts for the course or from Internet web pages. You must bring readings (or copies of them) to class for the dates they are assigned. In some cases, I may distribute photocopied readings to you in class. See the course outline below for details.
Participation: Through communication, ideas are formed, revised, borrowed, and developed. It is through argument, description, explanation, and improvisation – within a community – that individual learning flourishes. This course requires full participation (including active listening, facilitating, note-taking, and question-asking) to create an environment of open and shared learning. An effective participant is not someone who simply talks frequently, but someone who reliably offers thoughtful insights that help others to learn.
Student teams will be formed in early-on. Each team will have the responsibility of researching and writing a final project for the course and facilitating discussion once during the semester. It is expected that teams will engage in significant outside research and preparation.
Writing: Writing is one of the most productive forms of thinking. No late or emailed writing assignments will be accepted. Please double-space lines, use 12-point font and 1" margins, and be certain to include a references section that documents all your sources. Papers must be stapled or they will not be accepted. The sociotechnical infrastructure is unreliable, so plan accordingly and print papers well in advance.
Technology: Laptop computers and other portable technologies should be used in class only as learning-facilitation tools. During class, it is not acceptable to play games, answer email, surf the web, answer cell phones, text message, or engage in other non-class-related activities. Your participation grade will be penalized if you break this rule. Why? Not only do these practices negatively affect your learning and participation, but they also distract others and create an environment of disrespect.
Course Assignments
1. On-line Journal:
Starting in Week 2, on-line journal entries of approximately 500 words are due every Friday evening by midnight. Journal entries should be based on the reading, discussion, and the lecture(s) for the week. You must show that you did the reading and listened attentively to the lectures, but not, for example, by listing your reactions in a series of unconnected paragraphs: you must write a short essay that develops them as a whole. I will look not only for your reactions, but more importantly why you had them. Try to give reasons for your reactions, but if you are not sure about your reasons, at least try to state the dilemma in which you find yourself. It is even acceptable, in other words, to write an essay about your confusion.
I suggest, therefore, that you jot down ideas for your essays as you read or listen to the lectures, and afterwards step back for a moment to reflect on your overall reaction, that is, the theme for your essay. It is best to take a critical perspective for your theme. A critical perspective does not require that you be against the ideas expressed in the reading or lectures. It means simply that you have asked yourself some hard questions. What are the alternatives to your reaction? Why is your reaction better than the alternatives? It is always important to remember, especially when the issues in question concern how we should live, that your first reaction may well be defensive, often accompanied by some intense feelings. It is appropriate to explore these feelings in your essay, though it will not always be easy to get to the bottom of them. You will need patience and honesty if you wish to get beyond the level of gut reaction and opinion to the level of justified belief.
Mechanics: Post you entries to our course page on Blackboard under the proper week heading (e.g. “Week 2”) in the discussion board section. If you compose the entry in a word processing program, please cut-and-paste the text into Blackboard rather than attaching a file. These assignments will be graded on a pass / fail basis. If you make a sincere effort, you will pass. As with everything else, feel free to check with me at any time throughout the semester if you are concerned about your progress with journal entries.
2. Individual Papers:
There will be two individually composed papers of 6-8 pages required in this course. The first paper (due October 5) will be an analysis of some of the social science articles and chapters we will be reading. It will invite a critical investigation into what we can learn from the social sciences about surveillance technologies in society, and it will ask you to make an argument for how surveillance technologies should be regulated or governed to safeguard (or bring about) social equality and justice. The second paper (due November 16) will be an analysis of popular culture and humanistic representations of the politics of surveillance. Specifically, you will be asked to write about some of the films shown in the class, the work of literature we will be reading, and the art projects reproduced in our text book. Again, the goal is to make an argument about what we can learn from these sources about the complex interplay of surveillance and society, and the prospects for a more just and fair world.
3. Final Team Project:
The final project will be a team-based research paper of 20 pages due December 9. Teams will decide upon their own research topics concerning technological surveillance and will thoroughly investigate them using a variety of research techniques: interviewing, photographing, mapping, observing, surveying, and – of course – reading. Some possible examples of research areas include: mapping surveillance cameras on campus or in Phoenix, determining local policies for data retention and access with public surveillance, analyzing the USA PATRIOT and Homeland Security Acts, critically investigating police use of surveillance in patrol cars or elsewhere, documenting counter-surveillance groups and tactics throughout the world, etc. Experimentation is highly encouraged for this project, and alternative formats are welcome. Be creative and have some fun!
I reserve the right to distribute unannounced quizzes on the reading or lecture material. Any missed points on these quizzes will be deducted from your participation grade. Quizzes may not be made-up if you are absent.
Academic Honesty
In order to avoid plagiarism, your papers must provide full citations for all references: direct quotes, summaries, or ideas. While you are encouraged to develop your thinking with your peers, you cannot use their material without citing it. Work from other courses will not be accepted in this course. Allowing your writing to be copied by another student is also considered cheating. Please review the Student Code of Conduct for complete guidelines on academic honesty. Note: Any instance of plagiarism or cheating can be grounds for failure of the entire course or expulsion from the university.
Gender-Fair Language
Language structures thought and action. Biases in language can (and do) naturalize inequities. Imprecise language also signifies un-interrogated values and sloppy thinking. For all of these reasons, the use of gender-fair language is expected in this course. For example, do not use words like "mankind" or "men" when referring to people in general; alternate between "she" and "he" instead of always using "he", or construct sentences in the plural instead of the singular so you can use "they" or "them" and avoid the problem altogether.
ESL/LD Students
Course requirements can be adjusted to serve the needs and capabilities of ESL and LD students. Please speak with the primary instructor during the first two weeks of class to make arrangements. Students may be advised to attend additional sessions during the instructors’ office hours so they can draw comparable value from the course.
Course Schedule (subject to revision)
Week 1 Introduction
August 24 Course Introduction
August 26 Michel Foucault. “The Eye of Power.” CTRL [SPACE]: pp.94-102
Jeremy Bentham. “The Penitentiary Panopticon...” CTRL [SPACE]: pp.114-119
Gilles Deleuze. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.”CTRL [SPACE]: pp. 316-321
Week 2 Piercing the “Truth”: Science and the Enlightenment
August 31 Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt. “The All-Seer.” CTRL [SPACE]: pp.16-31
Dörte Zbikowski. “The Listening Ear.” CTRL [SPACE]: pp.32-49
September 2 Peter Weibel. “Pleasure and the Panoptic Principle.” CTRL [SPACE]: 206-223
Week 3 Minority Report
September 7 [Minority Report: Film Showing]
September 9 [Minority Report: Film Showing]
September 14 Victor Burgin. “Jenni’s Room.” CTRL [SPACE]: 228-235
A. Adam. 2002. “Cyberstalking and Internet Pornography: Gender and the Gaze.
Ethics and Information Technology. 4 (2):133-142
September 16 Hille Koskela. 2000. “'The Gaze without Eyes': Video-surveillance and the
Changing Nature of Urban Space.” Progress in Human Geography 24 (2):243-265
Week 5 Privacy, Trust, & Sociality
September 21 Jason W. Patton. 2000. “Protecting Privacy in Public?: Surveillance Technologies and the Value of Public Places.” Ethics and Information Technology 2:181-187
Jean-François Blanchette, and Deborah G. Johnson. 2002. “Data Retention and the Panoptic Society: The Social Benefits of Forgetfulness.” The Information Society 18:33-45
September 23 Michael C. Musheno, James P. Levine, and Denis J. Palumbo. 1978. “Television
Surveillance and Crime Prevention: Evaluating an Attempt to Create Defensible
Space in Public Housing.” Social Science Quarterly 58 (4):647-656
[+ Exchange with Oscar Newman in same journal]
September 28 Timothy Druckrey. “Secreted Agents, Security Leaks, Immune Systems, Spore Wars...” CTRL [SPACE]: 150-157
Duncan Campbell. “Inside Echelon.” CTRL [SPACE]: 158-169
Robert Darnton. “The Stasi Files.” CTRL [SPACE]: 170-177
September 30 Various Art Projects. CTRL [SPACE]: 178-205
Week 7 End of Violence
October 5 Paper # 1 Due
[End of Violence. Film Showing.]
October 7 [End of Violence. Film Showing.]
Laura Kurgan. Art Project. CTRL [SPACE]: 416-421
Week 8 Public Fears
October 12 Cindi Katz. 2001. “The State Goes Home: Local Hypervigilance of Children and the Global Retreat from Social Reproduction.” Social Justice 28 (3):47-56
Niels Bonde. Art Project. CTRL [SPACE]: 510-513
October 14 Torin Monahan. 2004. “The Wrong Questions about Security and Surveillance.”
[Available on Blackboard]
Winfried Pauleit. “Video Surveillance and Postmodern Subjects.” CTRL [SPACE]: 464-479
Jamie Wagg. Art Project. CTRL [SPACE]: 486-491
Week 9 Everyday Surveillance
October 19 EPIC/PI. 2000. “Workplace Privacy.” http://www.privacyinternational.org/survey/phr2000/threats.html#Heading18
EPIC. 2004. “Workplace Privacy.” http://www.epic.org/privacy/workplace/
ACLU. 1996. “The Rights of Employees.”
http://archive.aclu.org/library/pbp12.html
ACLU. 1998. “Electronic Monitoring.” http://archive.aclu.org/issues/worker/legkit2.html
October 21 Torin Monahan. 2004. “The Surveillance Curriculum:
Risk Management and Social Control in the Neoliberal School.”
[Available on Blackboard]
Week 10 Whole Wide World
October 26 Paul McAuley. 2003. Whole Wide World: pp.1-120
October 28 Paul Virilio. “The Visual Crash.” CTRL [SPACE]: 108-113
Week 11 Whole Wide World
November 2 Paul McAuley. 2003. Whole Wide World: pp.121-242
November 4 Jean Baudrillard. “Telemorphosis.” CTRL [SPACE]: 480-485
Week 12 Whole Wide World
November 9 Paul McAuley. 2003. Whole Wide World: pp.243-376
November 11: Veterans Day, No Class
Week 13 Knowable Bodies / Gattaca
November 16 Paper # 2 Due
Irma van der Ploeg. 1999. “The Illegal Body: 'Eurodac' and the Politics of Biometric Identification.” Ethics and Information Technology 1:295-302
Biometrics and the “Mark of the Beast.” Handout
November 18 [Gattaca. Film Showing]
Week 14 Gattaca
November 23 [Gattaca. Film Showing]
November 25: Thanksgiving, No Class
Week 15 Counter-Surveillance
November 30 Steve Mann. “‘Reflectionism’ and ‘Diffusionism.’” CTRL [SPACE]: 530-543
Institute for Applied Autonomy. 2004. http://www.appliedautonomy.com/
®TMark. 2001. “Guide to Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) destruction.”
Steve Mann. “Shooting Back.” http://eyetap.org/wearcam/shootingback/
December 2 Torin Monahan. 2004. “Counter-surveillance as Political Intervention?” [Available on Blackboard]
NYCLU. Project. CTRL [SPACE]: 368-71
Week 16
December 7 Last Day of Class
Final Project Due