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Book part
Publication date: 16 October 2018

Antonio Francesco Maturo and Veronica Moretti

The chapter critically analyzes the concepts and the practices of surveillance in modern and postmodern societies along with their consequences. We show the changes in the…

Abstract

The chapter critically analyzes the concepts and the practices of surveillance in modern and postmodern societies along with their consequences. We show the changes in the systems, which are used to monitor individuals, and emphasize the transition toward soft surveillance systems, probably stimulated by digital technologies. This switch from top-down control to “lateral” monitoring systems encloses surveillance practices with suggestive names like interveillance, synopticon, and dataveillance. The dark side of digital health has a bright start. According to Topol’s (2016) vision of the future, we will soon be the “consumers,” the real protagonists, of the management of our health – thanks largely to the practically endless data about our bodies, behaviors, and lifestyles we will be able to collect and analyze. We will share our health information in real time with the doctors whom we will choose based on their score in clinical rankings (here, too, quantification rears its head). Yet, this simplified version of health makes it seem that there are always some solutions, which the algorithm can supply as long as it has enough information. Moreover, in the United States, some health-insurance companies have started to offer a discount on premiums to the members who agree to collect and share self-tracking data with them. Clearly, the discount is given only to the workers who have healthy habits. At first sight, this can seem as a win-win trade-off; however, what today is presented as an individual option can easily become a requirement tomorrow.

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Digital Health and the Gamification of Life: How Apps Can Promote a Positive Medicalization
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78754-366-9

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Book part
Publication date: 20 September 2014

Patrick Rafail

Scholarship on the state control of social movements has predominately focused on overt repression, resulting in comparatively less attention to more covert forms of control…

Abstract

Scholarship on the state control of social movements has predominately focused on overt repression, resulting in comparatively less attention to more covert forms of control. Researchers have suggested that government surveillance of social movement organizations (SMOs) has become increasingly widespread and routinized in the post-September 11, 2001 era, but this hypothesis has remained untested. Since contemporary surveillance is grounded in a logic of information gathering that has diffused across law enforcement agencies since the September 11 attacks, government actors now cast a wide net and monitor a large variety of groups. This study shows that a result, traditional factors predicting surveillance, such as contentious behavior, have less explanatory power. Using a database of 409 SMOs active in Philadelphia between January 1996 and October 2009, the research asked who and why particular groups are monitored by the Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security (PA-OHS) between November 2009 and September 2010. Bayesian logistic regression analysis is used to examine the variables predicting surveillance. Findings show that 23% of the SMOs in the sample were targets of surveillance. Organizational ideology was the strongest predictor and there was little evidence that history of contentious protests or previous conflict with the police influenced coming under surveillance. However, groups with less visibility in traditional media sources were more likely to be monitored.

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Intersectionality and Social Change
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-105-3

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Book part
Publication date: 29 February 2008

Kevin Stenson

An industry of description and interpretation has developed around the growth of surveillance, accelerated by: the development of the internet; volatile international relations…

Abstract

An industry of description and interpretation has developed around the growth of surveillance, accelerated by: the development of the internet; volatile international relations since the collapse of communism; demographic mobility, segregation by class and ethnicity in the rich and poor worlds, sharpening inequalities, and post 9/11 fears of terrorism. Influential narratives have emphasised the diminishing power of sovereign nation-states in a marketised and globalised world. This chapter challenges the notion that coercive, sovereign modes of rule are a monarchical survival in decline. Rather, sovereign technologies of rule, in which surveillance is central involves strategies of governance from below as well as from above. They combine coercive with rhetorical, metaphorical communication and other ‘soft’ modes of rule. These make thinkable the nation-state as a discrete, defensible entity. Political communication translates between the complex technical expertise of evolving surveillance and security technologies and language intelligible to the public. Though surveillance technologies and information can be produced by commercial and other non-state sites of governance, metaphorically, much surveillance can be viewed as the extension of the eye of the sovereign. Although we are all targets of surveillance, those seen as threatening to the majority help to constitute and reproduce the social collectivity.

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Surveillance and Governance: Crime Control and Beyond
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1416-4

Abstract

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The Emerald Handbook of Work, Workplaces and Disruptive Issues in HRM
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80071-780-0

Book part
Publication date: 21 December 2010

Stuart Connor and Richard Huggins

The potential afforded by contemporary forms of surveillance to monitor vast amounts of information raises a number of problems, including ‘who or what’ should be distinguished as…

Abstract

The potential afforded by contemporary forms of surveillance to monitor vast amounts of information raises a number of problems, including ‘who or what’ should be distinguished as the subject of surveillance and how is the extension and intensification of surveillance to be legitimated without encroaching on the sensibilities of those who deem themselves innocent. It is argued that the ‘chav’, one of the latest variants of an underclass discourse to emerge in the United Kingdom, provides an example of how an ideological figure can be employed both to justify the introduction of disciplinary surveillance technologies and become the proposed identification of targets for such apparatus. Following an outline of the term underclass and a guide to the language and imagery of the ‘chav’, the argument presented in this chapter is developed and represented through an examination of a range of media representing and responding to anti-social behaviour. The utilisation of media to render visible and represent those seen as responsible for anti-social and criminal behaviour is both an application of new technologies of surveillance and a re-invention of older forms of collective and communal punishment, control and regulation. What these examples share is the communication of a frame that equates ‘chavs’ with ‘anti-social’ behaviour and surveillance as a central component of any strategy for community safety. Thus, rather than the existence of ‘chavs’, or any allegedly threatening ‘other’ requiring surveillance, it is argued that it is surveillance that requires the existence of the ‘chav’. Put another way, if ‘chavs’ did not exist, then, for the exponents of surveillance at least, they would have to be invented.

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Social Control: Informal, Legal and Medical
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-346-1

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 17 August 2021

Mike Hynes

Abstract

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The Social, Cultural and Environmental Costs of Hyper-Connectivity: Sleeping Through the Revolution
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-976-2

Book part
Publication date: 30 November 2020

Ali Akbulut and Gökçen Firdevs Yücel Caymaz

Today, the presence of unwanted activities threatening the safety of the field, which has negative effects on daily life and social psychology, is increasing day by day. There is…

Abstract

Today, the presence of unwanted activities threatening the safety of the field, which has negative effects on daily life and social psychology, is increasing day by day. There is no doubt that it is inevitable to avoid these threats, but it is possible to take some measures to reduce the destructive power of these threats. Nowadays, increasing terrorist attacks increase the importance of field safety design in urban areas. There is a loss of life in attacks around the world. The subject of this study is to investigate the design criteria related to the built environment and the measures to be taken in the case of bomb attacks in the built environment. In this study, a checklist will designed to measure the security design process around the building. The checklist titles are taken mainly from the “Safety design and Landscape Architecture” series of the Landscape Architecture Technical Information Series/LATIS publications by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and the Risk Management Series of the Federal Emergency Management Agency/FEMA (FEMA, 2003, 2007; LATIS, 2016) and others. The checklist created as a result of literature review will be tested in Istanbul Sultanahmet Square. As a result of the study, it was determined that improvements should be made in the areas of vehicular and pedestrian access, parking lots, lighting and trash receptacle designs around Sultanahmet Square.

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International Case Studies in the Management of Disasters
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83982-187-5

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Book part
Publication date: 29 August 2017

Martha Gabriela Martinez, Jillian Clare Kohler and Heather McAlister

Using the pharmaceutical sector as a microcosm of the health sector, we highlight the most prevalent structural and policy issues that make this sector susceptible to corruption…

Abstract

Using the pharmaceutical sector as a microcosm of the health sector, we highlight the most prevalent structural and policy issues that make this sector susceptible to corruption and ways in which these vulnerabilities can be addressed. We conducted a literature review of publications from 2004 to 2015 that included books, peer-reviewed literature, as well as gray literature such as working papers, reports published by international organizations and donor agencies, and newspaper articles discussing this topic. We found that vulnerabilities to corruption in the pharmaceutical sector occur due to a lack of good governance, accountability, transparency, and proper oversight in each of the decision points of the pharmaceutical supply chain. What works best to limit corruption is context specific and linked to the complexity of the sector. At a global level, tackling corruption involves hard and soft international laws and the creation of international standards and guidelines for national governments and the pharmaceutical industry. At a national level, including civil society in decision-making and monitoring is also often cited as a positive mechanism against corruption. Anticorruption measures tend to be specific to the particular “site” of the pharmaceutical system and include improving institutional checks and balances like stronger and better implemented regulations and better oversight and protection for “whistle blowers,” financial incentives to refrain from engaging in corrupt behavior, and increasing the use of technology in processes to minimize human discretion. This chapter was adapted from a discussion piece published by Transparency International UK entitled Corruption in the Pharmaceutical Sector: Diagnosing the Challenges.

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The Handbook of Business and Corruption
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-445-7

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Book part
Publication date: 6 August 2018

Amy A. Ross

Purpose: As biomedicine grants technology and quantification privileged roles in our cultural constructions of health, media and technology play an increasingly important role in

Abstract

Purpose: As biomedicine grants technology and quantification privileged roles in our cultural constructions of health, media and technology play an increasingly important role in mediating our everyday experiences of our bodies and may contribute to the reproduction of gendered norms.

Design: This study draws from a broad variety of disciplines to contextualize and interpret contemporary trends in self-quantification, focusing on metrics for health and fitness. I will also draw from psychology and feminist scholarship on objectification and body-surveillance.

Findings: I interpret body-tracking tools as biomedical technologies of self-surveillance that facilitate and encourage control of human bodies, while solidifying demands for standardization around neoliberal values of enhancement and optimization. I also argue that body-tracking devices reinforce and normalize the scrutiny of human bodies in ways that may reproduce and advance longstanding gender disparities in detriment of women.

Implications: A responsible conceptualization, design, implementation, and usage of health-tracking technologies requires us to recognize and better understand how technologies with widely touted benefits also have the potential to reinforce and extend inequalities, alter subjective experiences and produce damaging outcomes, especially among certain groups. I conclude by proposing some alternatives for devising technologies or encouraging practices that are sensitive to these differences and acknowledge the validity of alternative values.

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eHealth: Current Evidence, Promises, Perils and Future Directions
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78754-322-5

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Abstract

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Games in Everyday Life: For Play
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-937-8

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