Surveillance and Society

4 units · Graduate courses (200-299)

Seminar, three hours. To live in the 21st century is to live in the surveillance society, or a society in which virtually all significant social, institutional, or business activities involve collecting information to make decisions, minimize risk, sort populations, and exercise power. Introduction to interdisciplinary approaches to theorizing and examining surveillance, with emphasis on sociological perspectives. Surveying various parts of social life (i.e., entertainment and social media, economic, medical, cultural tracking, and punitive state surveillance), students consider how technologies and societies interact to produce security, control, fear, vulnerability, and/or empowerment. Letter grading.