I think I'll submit an abstract to this conference:
Source:
http://sydney.edu.au/news/law/457.html?eventid=8793
Surveillance and/in Everyday Life Conference
20 February 2012 to 21 February 2012
The University of Sydney's Surveillance and Everyday Life Research Group is hosting a two-day international conference entitled,Surveillance and/in Everyday Life: Monitoring Pasts, Presents and Futures. The event, to be held in The University of Sydney's state of the art Law School Building, will bring together key international scholars, policy makers, practitioners, artists and social commentators to discuss the social, cultural, historical, political, legal, economic and technical dimensions of surveillance. Few topics have greater contemporary public relevance and social significance than the increased monitoring and visibility of everyday living and the emergent surveillance capacities of new information communication technologies and organizational practices.
The Surveillance and Everyday Life Research Group project brings together a number of early career, mid career and distinguished scholars from across The University of Sydney to critically and collaboratively examine the everyday production and experience of surveillance, and to explore the multitude of thematics emanating from the transactional interplays and exchanges among organizations, technologies and individuals.
About the conference
The intensification and diversification of surveillance in recent decades has been remarkable. CCTV cameras, private investigators, loyalty cards, body scanners, DNA swabs, RFID tags, Web 2.0 platforms/protocols and internet cache cookies constitute only some of the many instruments facilitating the routine extraction and collection of personal information.
Advancement in technological applications, and wider cultures of risk, uncertainty, distrust and consumption, have all helped to legitimate and naturalize surveillance as a multi-purpose tool in the everyday lives of individuals and organizations. Yet, whilst surveillance seems increasingly embedded in the physical and cultural fabric of contemporary living, and whilst surveillance today is qualitatively and quantitatively different from previous modes, it is by nomeans a novel phenomenon. From time immemorial, detailed records have been accumulated on the health, morality, cognitive development, motivations, sexualities, incomes, work activities and whereabouts of certain populations - not to mention on animal relations, planetary constellations, environmental conditions, and the like. In the past, as in the present, forms of life have been and are targeted by a polymerous array of monitoring and recording devices. Moreover, surveillance as a mode of social regulation, a cultural medium, a symbolic resource and a companion species is set to further dominate the political, economic and socio-cultural landscapes of future human societies and social assemblages; but with what implications for social justice, social relations and subjectivities? This conference critically considers the significance of everyday surveillance in relation to temporality, exploring the changing nature of surveillance as it relates to cultural specificities, past transformations, present landscapes and possible/emergent futures.
Confirmed keynote conference presenters include:
* Professor David Lyon, Queen's University, Canada
* Professor Kevin Haggerty, University of Alberta, Canada
* Professor Pat O'Malley, University of Sydney, Australia
