Message posted on 26/02/2018

Reminder - CfC Edited Volume: Sensing Security. Sensors and the Making of Transnational Security Infrastructures

                Dear colleagues,
<br>
<br>the submission deadline for the edited volume "Sensing Security" is
<br>approaching (March 1st). We are looking forward to your abstracts!
<br>The calls is also attached as a pdf version and can be found online
<br>here: https://digiones.org/2018/01/13/cfp-edited-volume-sensing-security/
<br>
<br>Best,
<br>Nina, Nikolaus, & Geoffrey
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>Call for Contributions
<br>
<br>
<br>Sensing Security:  
<br>
<br>Sensors and the Making of Transnational Security Infrastructures
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>Editors:
<br>
<br>
<br>Nina Witjes, (MCTS, Technical University of Munich)
<br>
<br>Nikolaus Pöchhacker (MCTS,Technical University of Munich)
<br>
<br>Geoffrey C. Bowker (Evoke Lab, University of California, Irvine)
<br>
<br>                   
<br>
<br>In outer-space, underwater, in cities, our homes, or on our bodies -
<br>there is no shortage of settings that we now find equipped, imagined and
<br>measured with sensors. Anything and anyone can become a sensor,
<br>gathering and transmitting data about our world in which “there are now
<br>more automated sensors perceiving our environment and the elements that
<br>constitute it than there are living human beings” (Tironi, 2017, p. 2). 
<br>Invested with ideals ranging from ‘invisible computing’, the ‘Internet
<br>of Things’, ‘global transparency’ or ‘algorithmic governance’,  sensing
<br>technologies have been in particular foregrounded in contemporary
<br>academic and policy debates about the relations between data, security
<br>and politics. Approaching sensors as socio-technical devices (Amichelle
<br>et al., 2012) we invite work that explores how they move into and out of
<br>the security sector over time that even co-produce novel security
<br>regimes (Witjes & Olbrich, 2017; Salter, 2008).
<br>
<br>The increasingly globalized socio-technical infrastructures in the
<br>making are often understood as creating an environment where the
<br>abundance of available data collections increasingly leads to the
<br>formation of regimes of ‘dataveillance’ (Amoore & de Goede, 2005). So
<br>far, much work on the role of sensors as security devices has mainly
<br>attended to their materialities and governance in national settings,
<br>providing valuable insights how sensors are shaping knowledge, policies,
<br>power relations (Suchman, Follis, & Weber, 2017). Building on and
<br>inviting work from a variety of fields, in particular STS, security
<br>studies, critical data studies, sociology and anthropology, this edited
<br>volume seeks to understand the role of sensors in the making of
<br>transnational security infrastructures. We are in particular interested
<br>in accounts that contribute to understand how sensing devices - from
<br>satellites and drones to environmental sensor networks and digital
<br>sensing infrastructures – become invested with global and
<br>socio-political significance. We seek both large-scale empirical
<br>accounts of historical and contemporary cases across the globe, and
<br>welcome papers that critically investigate sensors and sensory networks
<br>as situated practices of constructing security, shaping and shaped by
<br>changing local and global socio-technical environments.
<br>
<br>More specifically, we ask how collective actors, such as states or
<br>international institutions, are not only informed by these sensors, but
<br>co-constituted in heterogeneous networks (Passoth & Rowland, 2015).
<br>Contributing to the emerging intersections between STS and security
<br>studies, this volume will attend to questions of macro level security
<br>politics and micro level sensing practices as being enabled and mediated
<br>through boundary infrastructures (Bowker & Star, 2000). Expanding on
<br>Jennifer Gabry´s (2016) work on distributed sensor technologies as
<br>shifting the relations, entities, occasions, and interpretive registers
<br>of sensing, we argue the interplay of sensing and (algorithmic)
<br>sense-making marks an highly important, yet underexplored momentum in
<br>the social construction of security in digital societies. Sensory
<br>devices are thus not only co-producing multiple ontologies of the world
<br>(Jasanoff, 2004) but also mediate “macro-level” entities through
<br>information infrastructures in the making and vice versa (Mukerji, 2011;
<br>Pelizza, 2016).
<br>
<br>Going beyond established boundaries in academic publishing and following
<br>the tradition of STS as an engaged program (Sismondo, 2008), we also aim
<br>to establish an opportunity to bring together people who work on common
<br>topics, but seldomly cross paths due to their differing approaches.
<br>Therefore we are keen to invite cooperative chapters from
<br>practitioners/activists and social scientists who creatively discuss
<br>their work and experiences concerning the various interplays between
<br>techno-societies and (in)securities.
<br>
<br>The following questions shall guide the contributors:
<br>
<br>  * Which 'infrastructural inversions' (Bowker & Star, 2000)  occur when
<br>    sensors become objects of international political controversy? How
<br>    do sensors as security devices move in and out security discourses?
<br>  * How do sensors embedded in smart borders or body scanners contribute
<br>    to determine mobilities by co-constructing identities as well as
<br>    novel forms of (criminological) knowledge through predictive analytics?
<br>  * How do sensing practices and data infrastructures play out in
<br>    different parts of the world? What are the various ways in which our
<br>    electronic devices - and their leftovers - are connected to human
<br>    rights violations, conflict and exclusion and how could a
<br>    responsible governance of sensors look like?
<br>  * How do sensors shape, shift and constitute domains of national and
<br>    international security and policy-making? What is the role of sensor
<br>    infrastructures in the constitution and mediation between state and
<br>    non-state actors?
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>Deadline for abstracts (max. 250 words):1 March, 2018,notification of
<br>acceptance will be given by 15 March, 2018.
<br>
<br>
<br>We have an initial expression of interest from Mattering Press
<br>(https://www.matteringpress.org)  for this edited volume and will
<br>circulate updates regarding the publishing process as soon as possible.
<br>
<br>Contact: sensingsecurity@mcts.tum.de 
<br>
<br>References
<br>
<br>
<br>Amicelle, A., Aradau, C., & Jeandesboz, J. (2015). Questioning security
<br>devices: Performativity, resistance, politics. Security Dialogue, 46(4),
<br>293–306.
<br>
<br>Amoore, L., & Goede, M. D. (2005). Governance, risk and dataveillance in
<br>the war on terror. Crime, Law and Social Change, 43(2–3), 149–173.
<br>
<br>Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (2000). Sorting things out: classification
<br>and its consequences. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
<br>
<br>Gabrys, J. (2016). Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and
<br>the Making of a Computational Planet. Minneapolis: University of
<br>Minnesota Press.
<br>
<br>Jasanoff, S. (Ed.). (2004). States of Knowledge: The co-production of
<br>science and social order. Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis.
<br>
<br>Mukerji, C. (2011). Jurisdiction, inscription, and state formation:
<br>administrative modernism and knowledge regimes. Theory and Society,
<br>40(3), 223–245.
<br>
<br>Passoth, J.-H., & Rowland, N. (2015). Acting in International Relations?
<br>The State Hypothesis, ANT, and Agency. In D. Jacobi & A. Freyberg-Inan
<br>(Eds.), Human Nature, Agency and Beyond. Reflecting on the Human Element
<br>in World Politics (pp. 286–304). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press
<br>
<br>Pelizza, A. (2016). Developing the Vectorial Glance: Infrastructural
<br>Inversion for the New Agenda on Government Information Systems. Science,
<br>Technology, & Human Values, 41(2), 298–321.
<br>
<br>Salter, M. B. (Ed.). (2008).Politics at the Airport.Minneapolis:
<br>University of Minnesota Press.
<br>
<br>Sismondo, S. (2008). Science and technology studies and an engaged
<br>program. In E. Hackett, O. Amsterdamska, M. Lynch, & J. Wajcman (Eds.),
<br>The handbook of science and technology studies (pp. 13–30). Cambridge,
<br>MA: MIT Press.
<br>
<br>Suchman, L., Follis, K., & Weber, J. (2017). Tracking and Targeting:
<br>Sociotechnologies of (In)security. Science, Technology, & Human Values,
<br>42(6), 983–1002.
<br>
<br>Tironi, M. (2017). Regimes of Perceptibility and Cosmopolitical Sensing:
<br>The Earth and the Ontological Politics of Sensor Technologies. Science
<br>as Culture, 1–7.
<br>
<br>Witjes, N., & Olbrich, P. (2017). A fragile transparency: satellite
<br>imagery analysis, non-state actors, and visual representations of
<br>security. Science and Public Policy, 44(4), 524–534.
<br>
<br>Zureik, E., & Hindle, K. (2004). Governance, Security and Technology:
<br>the Case of Biometrics. Studies in Political Economy, 73(1), 113–137.
<br>_______________________________________________
<br>EASST's Eurograd mailing list
<br>Eurograd (at) lists.easst.net
<br>Unsubscribe or edit subscription options: http://lists.easst.net/listinfo.cgi/eurograd-easst.net
<br>
<br>Meet us via https://twitter.com/STSeasst
<br>
<br>Report abuses of this list to Eurograd-owner@lists.easst.net
            
view formatted text

EASST-Eurograd RSS

mailing list
30 recent messages