Histories of Surveillance from Antiquity to the Digital Era


Book Description

Deploying empirical studies spanning from early Imperial China to the present day, 17 scholars from across the globe explore the history of surveillance with special attention to the mechanisms of power that impel the concept of surveillance in society. By delving into a broad range of historical periods and contexts, the book sheds new light on surveillance as a societal phenomenon, offering 10 in-depth, applied analyses that revolve around two main questions: • Who are the central actors in the history of surveillance? • What kinds of phenomena have been deemed eligible for surveillance, for example, information flows, political movements, border-crossing trade, interacting with foreign states, workplace relations, gender relations, andsexuality?




Writing Computer and Information History


Book Description

This is not a book about the history of computing or the history of information. Instead, it is a meta-historical book about the research and writing of these types of history. The formal presentation of historical research in the form of a publication often hides the process by which the topic was selected, boundaries were drawn, evidence was selected, analytic approach was chosen and applied, results were presented, how this work fits into a larger body of scholarship, the implicit goals and biases of the author, and many other similar issues. This process of learning about the various ways to carry out computer history or information history can be enriched by this collection of reflective essays by experienced scholars, discussing the craft that they practice. This is a book that concerns both computer history and information history. The first scholarship in computer history by professionally trained scholars began to appear in the 1970s, so we are approaching a half century of research and publication in this area. The field has generated numerous pieces of exemplary scholarship from various perspectives such as intellectual history of individual technologies, business histories of firms, economic histories of market sectors, externalist histories of funding and professionalization, and so on. However, the field continues to evolve, especially as computing and communication technologies have drawn together in the form of the Internet and social media; and with them a new set of scholars is participating, drawn not only from the history of science and technology, but also from the communication and media studies fields. Powerful theories, approaches, and frameworks are being increasingly drawn more widely from both the humanities and the social sciences to inform the practice of computer history. The scholars in this volume look at what’s happened, what’s happening now, and where historical scholarship in these disciplines is headed.




Bulk Surveillance, Democracy and Human Rights Law in Europe


Book Description

This book discusses contemporary standards of legal safeguards in the area of bulk electronic surveillance from the perspective of the European legal model. Bulk, or untargeted, surveillance, although traditionally associated with the interception of electronic communications, is increasingly used as a convenient tool for collecting information on large groups of society. The collection of redundant information, which is intrinsic to bulk surveillance, is no longer a side effect but an important objective of the use of bulk powers. As a result, untargeted surveillance is everywhere increasingly being implemented, and without any clear link to state security or crime-fighting objectives. This work examines the origins of untargeted measures, explores their mechanics and key concepts, and defines what distinguishes them from other forms of surveillance. The various elements of the legal safeguards in place, which are fundamental to protecting individuals from the risks of abuse of power, are analysed in detail. The book discusses not only the different standards of legal safeguards, but also gives examples of their implementation in individual European countries. It also examines the relationship between the development of the global data market and untargeted surveillance powers, in particular in the context of the risks associated with algorithmic surveillance, client-side scanning, the privatisation of surveillance – or surveillance as a service – and the increasingly widespread use of preventive content filtering mechanisms. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers working in the areas of law, international relations, public policy, engineering and sociology. It will also appeal to professionals dealing with various aspects of the use of surveillance measures, such as experts, members of the legislature and law enforcement agencies. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.




Refugees and Population Transfer Management in Europe, 1914–1920s


Book Description

This book provides a comprehensive study of refugee movements and population transfers across Europe during the First World War and the early postwar period. Drawing parallels with contemporary migration issues, the book serves a social and educational purpose by highlighting Europe's history of migration and emphasizing the relevance of past experiences to current challenges. It seeks to enhance understanding, raise social awareness, and contribute to the broader discourse on war refugeeism by applying historical insights to address contemporary migration crises. The authors discuss how issues of refugee movements and population transfers were addressed in different contexts and reflect on refugees as both war-induced migrants and political tools for authorities. The book covers a range of topics including humanitarian systems during the war and the early postwar period, refugee locations, policy influence, national issues, self-organization, and aid for refugees, as well as immigration control in time after bordering the postimperial Europe. It also addresses the composition of populations in postwar reconstruction processes and its population dynamics. This volume will be of value to those interested in modern European history, social and political history.




The Cambridge Handbook of Race and Surveillance


Book Description

Featuring chapters authored by leading scholars in the fields of criminology, critical race studies, history, and more, The Cambridge Handbook of Race and Surveillance cuts across history and geography to provide a detailed examination of how race and surveillance intersect throughout space and time. The volume reviews surveillance technology from the days of colonial conquest to the digital era, focusing on countries such as the United States, Canada, the UK, South Africa, the Philippines, India, Brazil, and Palestine. Weaving together narratives on how technology and surveillance have developed over time to reinforce racial discrimination, the book delves into the often-overlooked origins of racial surveillance, from skin branding, cranial measurements, and fingerprinting to contemporary manifestations in big data, commercial surveillance, and predictive policing. Lucid, accessible, and expertly researched, this handbook provides a crucial investigation of issues spanning history and at the forefront of contemporary life.




Jeremy Bentham and Australia


Book Description

Jeremy Bentham and Australia is a collection of scholarship inspired by Bentham’s writings on Australia. These writings are available for the first time in authoritative form in Panopticon versus New South Wales and other writings on Australia, a volume in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham published by UCL Press. In the present collection, a distinguished group of authors reflect on Bentham’s Australian writings, making original contributions to existing debates and setting agendas for future ones. In the first part of the collection, the works are placed in their historical contexts, while the second part provides a critical assessment of the historical accuracy and plausibility of Bentham’s arguments against transportation from the British Isles. In the third part, attention turns to Bentham’s claim that New South Wales had been illegally founded and to the imperial and colonial constitutional ramifications of that claim. Here, authors also discuss Bentham’s work of 1831 in which he supports the establishment of a free colony on the southern coast of Australia. In the final part, authors shed light on the history of Bentham’s panopticon penitentiary scheme, his views on the punishment and reform of criminals and what role, if any, religion had to play in that regard, and discuss apparently panopticon-inspired institutions built in the Australian colonies. This collection will appeal to readers interested in Bentham’s life and thought, the history of transportation from the British Isles, and of British penal policy more generally, colonial and imperial history, Indigenous history, legal and constitutional history, and religious history.




Privacy at Sea


Book Description

This book explores the idea of privacy at sea, from early sixteenth-century maritime expansions to nineteenth-century naval developments. In this period, the sea became a focal point of political and economic ambition as technological and cultural shifts enabled a more extensive exploration of maritime spaces and global coexistence at sea. The exploration of the sea and the conflicts arising from establishing control over maritime routes demanded a more nuanced distinction and negotiation between State and private efforts. Privateering, for example, became a bridge between the private enterprises and the State’s warfares or trade struggles, demonstrating that the sea required public control at the same time as it enabled private endeavours. Although this tension between private and public interests has been explored in military and economic studies, questions of how the private appeared in maritime history have been discussed only through a particularly merchantile lens. This volume adds a new dimension to this discussion by focusing on how privacy and the private were perceived and created by the historical agents at sea. We aim to move beyond the mercantile “private” as a direct opposite to the “public” or the State, thereby opening the discussion of privacy at sea as a multiplicity of lived experiences. Chapters 1, 8 and 14 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.




Engaging with Historical Traumas


Book Description

This book provides case-studies of how teachers and practitioners have attempted to develop more effective ‘experiential learning’ strategies in order to better equip students for their voluntary engagements in communities, working for sustainable peace and a tolerant society free of discrimination. All chapters revolve around this central theme, testing and trying various paradigms and experimenting with different practices, in a wide range of geographical and historical arenas. They demonstrate the innovative potentials of connecting know-how from different disciplines and combining experiences from various practitioners in this field of shaping historical memory, including non-formal and formal sectors of education, non-governmental workers, professionals from memorial sites and museums, local and global activists, artists, and engaged individuals. In so doing, they address the topic of collective historical traumas in ways that go beyond conventional classroom methods. Interdisciplinary in approach, the book provides a combination of theoretical reflections and concrete pedagogical suggestions that will appeal to educators working across history, sociology, political science, peace education and civil awareness education, as well as memory activists and remembrance practitioners.




Sun Yatsen, Robert Wilcox and Their Failed Revolutions, Honolulu and Canton 1895


Book Description

Dynamite on the Tropic of Cancer is the radical, explosive retelling of the first decade of the 'Father of Modern China' Dr Sun Yatsen’s globally shaped formation as a professional revolutionist, and of the impact of the adult Sun’s revolutionary relationship with Hawaiʻi and with his varied communities of supporters there during its own most turbulent political decade, the 1890s, years in which this remote island nation transformed from native monarchy, via sovereign independent republic, to become the USA’s first overseas territory. Drawn from neglected primary sources, Dynamite reveals the hitherto untold story of the secret revolutionary alliance forged in Honolulu’s backstreets between Sun’s Xingzhonghui and the idiosyncratic italophile soldier Robert Wilcox, "Hawaiʻi’s Garibaldi" and leader of the Kanaka/Native Hawaiian counterrevolution of January 1895. This failed uprising to restore Hawaiʻi’s tragic last Queen, witnessed firsthand by Sun Yatsen, became the archetype upon which ten months later Sun would base his own first attempt at armed insurrection in China: the Canton uprising of 26 October 1895. With an epic sweep across the Pacific’s Tropic of Cancer, Dynamite is the most important study yet written on the origins of Sun Yatsen’s Chinese Revolution and its dynamic interface with Hawaiian history.




Labour and Economic Change in Southern Africa c.1900-2000


Book Description

This book explores the social and economic development of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi over the course of the twentieth century. These three countries have long shared and interconnected pasts. All three were drawn into the British Empire at a similar time and the formation of the ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland formally linked these countries together for a decade in the mid-twentieth century. This formal political relationship created dynamics that resulted in yet closer economic and social links. After Federation, the economic realities of industry, transport and labour supplies meant that these three countries continued to be intricately interconnected. Yet despite these connected pasts, comparative work on the economic histories of Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and how these change over time, is rare. This book addresses the gap by providing the first comprehensive collection of labour and census data across the twentieth century for these three countries. The different economic models and performances of these states offer good comparison, allowing researchers to look at different models of development, and how these played out over the long-term. The book provides data on population growth and change, industrial and occupational structure, and the various shifts in what the economically active population did. It will be useful for historians, economists, development studies scholars and non-governmental organisations working on twentieth-century and contemporary southern Africa.