Tag: Surveillance

  • Corporate Enabled State Crime 2021 – Pegasus Spyware

    Pegasus Spyware – an example of corporate enabled state crime breaching the human right of privacy in 2021

  • Education and social control

    How do schools try to control pupils? Some of the ways include academic surveillance, CCTV, teaching British Values. Prevent and the use of isolation units. It also explores how effective schools are as agents of social control.

  • The Quantified Self by Deborah Lupton: A Brief Summary

    The Quantified Self by Deborah Lupton: A Brief Summary

    ‘This book is about contemporary self-tracking cultures, analysed from a critical sociological perspective. It explores how the practices meanings, discourse, and technologies associated with self-tracking are the product of broader social cultural and political processes.’ This summary is really just some extended notes I took on the book as self-tracking and the quantified self are…

  • The State COULD be watching you: and other lessons from #Hunted

    In case you’ve been living in the dark-ages and missed it (like me) Hunted is a T.V. show in which ordinary individuals take on the role of fugitives on the run from ‘Hunters’ who take on the role of agents of the state (think of MI6 meets special ops). The latest C4 series kick-started with…

  • Good Sociology Movies #1: Minority Report

    Thought I’d start bashing out the occasional Friday post on good sociology movies… starting with Minority Report – which is a great intro to the ‘surveillance and crime control‘ aspect of the AQA’s 7192 sociology syllabus, crime and deviance topic, It’s the opening scene in Minority Report which is really the relevant bit here: the…

  • Sociology in the News (8) – Killer Clowns and Donald Trump’s Misogyny

    The Killer Clown Craze  The societal response to the so called ‘Killer Clown Craze‘ seems like a good example of a moral panic. Piers Morgan (moral entrepreneur supremo) has waded in against the craze, and as soon as he gets involved in anything, that’s a sure sign of moral panic). Twenty years ago, people dressed in…

  • Actuarial Justice and Risk Management

    Feely and Simon (1994) argue that a new ‘technology of power’ is emerging throughout the justice system. It differs from Foucault’s disciplinary power in three main ways: It focuses on groups rather than individuals It is not interested in rehabilitating offenders, but simply in preventing them from offending It uses calculations of risk or ‘actuarial…

  • Sociology in the News 6 (Surveillance and Crime Control)

    Last week, millions of mobile phones across New York City got a text alert. It read “Wanted: Ahmed Kham Rahami, 28 year old male. See Media for pic, call 9-1-1 if seen” The message related to a man suspected of planting the previous weekend’s bombs in New York and New Jersey, and he was picked…

  • Foucault – Surveillance and Crime Control

    Michel Foucault is one of the most influential sociological thinkers of the last half century. One of his key contributions to criminology is his focus on how the nature of crime control has shifted from using the threat of violence and the fear of being physically punished to control through surveillance – fear of being…

  • Postmodern and Late Modern Criminology

    A Summary sheet covering post and late modern theories of crime – focusing on Jock Young’s ‘Vertigo of Late Modernity’, the cultural criminology of Katz and Lyng (edgework), and Foucault’s concept of discplinary power and the shift to control through surveillance.  Post and Late Modern Theories of Crime (PM/ LM Theories of Crime Control PART…