Dear all,
I am happy to announce the preliminary schedule for our upcoming seminar
series. An additional seminar for November will be added soon.
Registration links for both seminars will be published soon.
* On October 13th (3PM - 4.30PM Brussels Time), we welcome Smith
Oduro-Marfo for a presentation entitled Surveillance for Development?
Implications of Surveillance-oriented Citizen Identification Systems in Global
South countries.
Increasingly, citizen identification systems that are digital, biometric and
interoperable are being introduced in Global South countries in the name of
development. The assumption or fact that the Global South state must navigate
a hardly legible society is being offered as a reason for the challenges with
socio-economic development in the Global South. Thus practically, the relative
underperformance of the Global South state in leading national development has
become an excuse for introducing surveillance-oriented identification systems.
My research in Ghana, for instance, shows a multi-actor consensus on the need
for such surveillance-oriented systems in order for the state to enhance its
capacity in resolving citizenship contestations, allocating taxes, collecting
taxes, distributing social welfare, making economic policy, fighting crime and
overall, leading the quest for socio-economic development. In this talk, I
explore the implications of justifying surveillance-oriented systems in the
name of development. I propose my Surveillance for Development (S4D) frame as
a starting point in appreciating the trend and its meanings. I also connect my
analysis to the 'care or control' debate in Surveillance Studies.
About Smith Oduro-Marfo
Smith Oduro-Marfo holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of
Victoria. He researches surveillance, privacy, technology policy and
inclusiveness in the Global South. Smith's doctoral dissertation supervised by
Professors Colin Bennet, Marlea Clarke and Wisdom Tettey analyzed multi-actor
debates for and against citizen identification systems in Ghana. In the study,
he focused on three key national projects in Ghana: the national biometric
identity card, national digital property addressing system and the SIM card
registration exercise. Smith holds the CIPP/C certification and has been an
IAAP Westin Scholar. He has also been a fellow with the Big Data Surveillance
Network, the IDRC and the Centre for Global Studies at the University of
Victoria. Beyond his academic interests, Smith is invested in promoting
inclusiveness and equity. He was the lead author for the recently-published
Black in British Columbia needs assessment report, and action plan. The report
assessed the implementation of the IDPAD in BC and offered 98 recommendations
to the provincial government. He is a consultant and open to collaboration.
* On December 14th (2PM - 3.30PM Brussels Time), Lior Volinz invites
Francisco Klauser for an interesting presentation entitled Policing with the
drone: Towards an aerial geopolitics of security.
This seminar explores in empirical detail the air-bound expectations,
imaginations and practices arising from the acquisition of a new police drone
in the Swiss canton of Neuchtel. It shows how drones are transforming the
ways in which the aerial realm is lived as a context, object and perspective
of policing. This tripartite structure is taken as a prism through which to
advance novel understandings of the simultaneously elemental and affective,
sensory, cognitive and practical dimensions of the aerial volumes within, on
and through which drones act. The study of the ways in which these differing
dimensions are bound together in how the police think about drones and what
they do with them enables the development of an 'aerial geopolitics of
security' that, from a security viewpoint, approaches interactions between
power and space in a three-dimensional and cross-ontological way.
About Francisco Klauser
Francisco Klauser is professor in political geography at the University of
Neuchtel, Switzerland. His work explores the socio-spatial implications,
power and surveillance issues arising from the digitisation of present-day
life, thus bridging the fields of human geography, surveillance studies and
risk research. Main research topics include video surveillance, mega-event
security, smart cities, airport surveillance, civil drones, and big data in
agriculture.
Hoping to welcome you all at one of our seminars!
Kind regards,
Bram Visser
PhD Candidate at the VUB Chair in Surveillance Studies
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