"Monahan provides updated perspectives on security culture to include situational awareness of the security industry and vulnerable identities and surveillance infrastructures. A good addition to the literature on surveillance."
—The Law and Politics Book Review "Surveillance
in the Time of Insecurity advances a compelling analysis of
original research to show how modern surveillance practices are
constructed within the political framework of our times. I highly
recommend this book to anyone interested in surveillance, security, or
the politics of neoliberalism."
—John Gilliom, author of Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance,
Resistance, and the Limits of Privacy
"Monahan demonstrates how surveillance
and security often feed off each other today, but also why we must
understand each in its own right. The illuminating case studies show
this perfectly."
—David Lyon, Surveillance Studies Centre, Queens
University, Canada
Description:
Threats of terrorism, natural disaster,
identity theft, job loss, illegal immigration, and even biblical
apocalypse—all are perils that trigger alarm in people today. Although
there may be a factual basis for many of these fears, they do not
simply represent objective conditions. Feelings of insecurity are
instilled by politicians and the media, and sustained by urban
fortification, technological surveillance, and economic vulnerability.
Surveillance
in the Time of Insecurity fuses advanced theoretical accounts of
state power and neoliberalism with original research from the social
settings in which insecurity dynamics play out in the new century.
Torin Monahan explores the counterterrorism-themed show 24, Rapture
fiction, traffic control centers, security conferences, public housing,
and gated communities, and examines how each manifests complex
relationships of inequality, insecurity, and surveillance. Alleviating
insecurity requires that we confront its mythic dimensions, the
politics inherent in new configurations of security provision, and the
structural obstacles to achieving equality in societies.
About the Author:
Torin Monahan is an
associate professor of human and organizational development and an
associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University. His writings
include Schools under Surveillance: Cultures of Control in Public
Education (Rutgers University Press).
