Interdisciplinary Programmes Academic year 2020 - 2021
Security, Secrecy and Surveillance MINT114 - Spring - 6 ECTS
Course Description
Security and secrecy have long been established as central tenets of sovereign institutions, bureaucratic organizations, and social relationships. Despite the growing urgency of security – made visible in threats of global epidemics, environmental crisis, social or political unrest — the control and management of information has become more secretive and opaque. How is secret knowledge produced, and to what effect, in processes of securitization and surveillance?
The course draws from inter-disciplinary approaches and texts in anthropology, history, political science, international relations, as well as security and surveillance studies.
Readings, guest lectures, and student presentations are organized under three sections. The first
– Security – introduces key debates in the field and historicizes different modalities of securitization. The second section – Secrecy – explores the political work and social life of the secret. The third — Surveillance — examines new emergent forms of digital and cyber surveillance.
PROFESSOR
Filipe Calvão
filipe.calvao@graduateinstitute.ch
Office hours:
https://calvao.youcanbook.me/
Shirin Barol
shirin.barol@graduateinstitute.ch
Office hours
Syllabus
(subject to change)Procedures, Assignments, Evaluation
We will be adopting a hybrid teaching method this semester, with online and in-class components.
The goal is to ensure an environment that is conducive to learning, creates equal opportunities for students in the classroom and online, and offers dynamic pedagogical tools. Contingent upon final enrollment, the syllabus, class exercises, and evaluation procedures will be ada pted to reflect this novel approach.
Evaluation will be based on a variety of assignments and learning opportunities, including in -class exercises and short written essays, each designed to sharpen and develop your writing and research skills. Completing the assigned readings and contributing to class discussions is a
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ASSISTANT
prerequisite to successfully attend this seminar.
Bilingual policy: The Graduate Institute is a bilingual institution. Lectures will be held in English but participation in class and written assignments may be completed in French.
Plagiarism constitutes a breach of academic integrity and will not be tolerated.
All paper assignments are to be sent electronically in 12-point font.
Detailed instructions and evaluation criteria are uploaded on moodle.
Grading:
a) Participation: 30% (20% presentation + 10% participation) b) Report Brief: 20%
c) Response papers: 20%
d) Conspiracy theory: 30%
a) Participation
This seminar is structured around close readings and discussion of the assigned texts. Presence is mandatory and students should come ready to discuss the texts. Absences should be communicated in advance by email and more than two unexcused absences will impact the final grade.
In addition to informed contributions to class discussions, participation will be evaluated based on the following exercises:
i) Presentation: you will be responsible for one presentation on one set of texts during the semester. The presentation should explore thoroughly and critically a specific facet of the problem at hand. Along with the presentation, you should prepare an individual handout to be shared in class.
ii) In-class group discussion: to foster further conversation, the class may occasionally be divided into small groups. Each group will be given a task or a question related to the readings, and asked to explore possible ways of addressing the task or devise an answer.
b) Report brief (1500 words)
For this exercise, you have to elaborate on a current problem in the style of a short op -ed, policy memo, or an extended book review on a topic relevant to the class (either included in the syllabus or to be discussed with the professor). The report brief should include a summary, a general background on the issue at hand, the state of research on the issue, and results or findings from your own research.
There are no specific guidelines for this exercise in terms of format but it should be a concise, well- written text (no clichés or redundancies) that offers a clear and persuasive argument. The main point is to inform the readers about a given subject matter. Depending on your choice of brief, you will have to i) define and situate the problem; ii) convincingly articulate and synthesize opposing views as well as available evidence in the service of your argument; iii) reference facts, citations, or other sources of data to support your point of view.
c) Response Papers (2 response papers, 500 words each)
Three times during the semester, students will be asked to react to one (or more) of the selected readings from the session. Start by providing the author and title of the text you read, followed by a brief summary: in a ‘nutshell’, what is the text about? What situation, context, or issue does it describe? This brief introduction should be followed by your ‘thesis statement’: do you agree or disagree with the author’s argument or account of the situation? Did you find any limitations or missing elements in the author’s analysis? This thesis statement is the core of your reaction paper, so you should take the time to reflect upon it, and if need be, re-write it. Make sure that it represents your epistemological position (i.e., how do you stand in relation to what you read), duly supported by evidence from the text. The remainder of the response paper should support your thesis. Explore the different facets of your view of the text and the author’s argument. You may conclude by raising further questions for discussion.
d) Conspiracy theory paper (2,500 words)
The world is currently witnessing an explosion of conspiracy theories, from QAnon and the deep state, “chemtrails” and vaccination panics, the “New World Order” and ‘false flag’ operations, to name only a few. Throughout the semester, each student will select one conspiracy theory to examine the subject, explanatory purview, potential audiences and popularity. What is theoretical about conspiracy theories? What can conspiratorial thinking reveal about the workings of power or security? What secrets does it purport to reveal, and how is suspicion and surveillance continually invoked in conspiracy theories, and to what effect? The paper should follow conventional standards of original academic research, relate the subject to readings on security, secrecy, or surveillance, and synthesize your findings (online and desk research) in a persuasive reflection on a conspiracy theory of your choice.
Schedule of readings (available on Moodle)
I. SECURITY
Week 1 – February 24. Introduction
In-class reading: Marx, “The Usefulness of Crime”
Week 2 – March 3. Crime, Violence, (dis)Order
- Comaroff, John L. and Jean Comaroff. 2006. Law and Disorder in the Postcolony: An Introduction.
In Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, pp. 1-56
- Caldeira, Teresa. 2000. City of Walls. Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo (“Talking of Crime and Ordering the World”), pp. 19-40.
Optional:
- Garland, David, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (pp. 167- 205)
Week 3 – March 10. Security apparatus
- Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish (pp. 1-15; 32-69; 195-228)
[Select one]
- Kaplan, Martha. 1995. Panopticon in Poona: an Essay on Foucault and Colonialism. Cultural Anthropology 10(1), pp. 85-98
- Thomas, Nicholas. 1990. “Sanitation and Seeing: The Creation of State Power in Early Colonial Fiji.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32(01):149 - 170
Optional:
- Kafka, Franz. 1919. In the Penal Colony
Week 4 – March 17. Securitization and Spaces of In/Security
- Goldstein, Daniel. 2012. Outlawed: Between Security and Rights in a Bolivian City (chapter 1) - Gluck, Zoltán and Setha Low. 2017. A Sociospatial framework for the anthropology of security - Hammerstadt, Anne. 2014. “Securitisation and Forced Migration,” in Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena et al (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (chapter 21)
Optional:
- De Leon, Jason. 2014. The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail.
Week 5 – March 24. Violence and Surveillance
Is there a difference between surveillance and perception of surveillance; between targeted violence and perception of targeted violence?
Invited guest speaker, Dr. Rebecca Tapscott, Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, IHEID
- Kalyvas, Stathis. 2006. The logic of violence in civil war. (Chapter 7)
- Tapscott, Rebecca. 2021. "Arbitrary States: Social Control and Modern Authoritarianism in Museveni’s Uganda" (“Whither the State? Surveillance, Crime Preventers, and Potential State Presence”).
Week 6 – March 31. Cyber Security: Hacktivism, Dark Web, and online crime
What do we mean by cyber security, and for whom? What vulnerabilities, exploits, and other threats do we face in cyberspace? What security and activist tools do we have at our disposal?
How to interact with and study anonymous, private, and ‘dark web’ worlds, from trolls, spammers, and hacktivists?
Invited guest speaker, Dr. Michael Kende
- Kende, Michael. 2021. “Is Our Data Secure” in The Flip Side of Free. Understanding the Economics of the Internet
- Coleman, Gabriella. 2017. ”Gopher, Translator, and Trickster: The Ethnographer and the Media” (in Fassin, ed. If Truth be told. The politics of Public Ethnography).
Optional:
- Landau, Susan. 2017. Listening in. Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age. (“How do we protect ourselves”, pp. 80-116).
- Gehl, Robert W. 2014. Power/freedom on the dark web: a digital ethnography of the Dark Web Social Network.
Week 7 – April 14. Discussion of report brief and conspiracy theory assignments.
What is theoretical about conspiracy theories? From the deep state to mind control, what forms, origin myths, and structures do conspiracy theories follow? How or why certain intuitions and experiences are marked as ‘conspiratorial’? How do conspiracies relate to surveillance, secrets, and security?
- Background text: West, Harry and Todd Sanders (ed.). 2003. Transparency and Conspiracy.
Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order ("Power Revealed and Concealed in the New World Order"), pp. 1-37
PART II – SECRECY
Week 8. April 21. The Social Life of Secrets
Questions: Is the intentional concealment of information a form of intimacy, deception, or privacy? Is secrecy social or anti-social? What is secret about secret societies? Do you agree, with Bentham, that “secrecy is an instrument of conspiracy” and that "it ought not be the system of a regular
government”? Is the content of secrets not as important as the forces managing and blocking access to information? What are the risks of prolonged secrecy or the effects of breaking the silence?
At home: watch one episode of the Youtube series “People Share their Secret Anonymously” (channel:
Thoraya Maronesy), and come to class ready to ‘present’ one of the secrets: we will consider the effects of revelation and concealment, the conditions of its production and maintenance, trust and betrayal.
- Simmel, G. 1906. “The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies”, pp. 441-498
- Verdery, Katherine. 2014. Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the Archive of Romania’s Secret Police (“The Secrets of a Secret Police”) [focus on pp. 77-119]
- Taussig, Michael. Defacement. Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative (“Secrecy Magnifies Reality”) [pp. 56-58]
Optional:
- Calvão, F. 2017. “The Company Oracle: Corporate Security and Diviner-Detectives in Angola’s Diamond Mines,” Comparative Studies in Society and History.
Week 9 – April 28. Gossip, Paranoia and Conspiracy
Are conspiracies on the rise today? What political work is performed by secretive conspiracies? How does gossip or conspiratorial thinking frame private-public / inside- outside / public-covert narratives? How to distinguish between truth and fiction, evidence- based and fakes? Do conspiracies derive their power from fear, suspicion, deception, or other moral panics?
- Gluckman, Max. 1963. Gossip and Scandal. Current Anthropology, vol. 4 no. 3, pp. 307-316 - Timothy Melley. 2012 The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction and the National Security State
(“The Postmodern Public Sphere” pp. 1-43; Optional: “Brainwashed!”, pp. 44-75) - Assange, Julian. 2006. “Conspiracy as Governance” (online publication).
Week 10 – May 5. Secret and Classified: Military-Corporate-Humanitarian complex?
What do we mean by the secrecy / threat matrix? How is (secret) national security a project of affect and emotional management? What are the hidden powers and unintended effects of information control, including biometric and identity management on blockchains for humanitarian purposes?
At home: read or watch President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961)
Transcript: https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=90&page=transcript or Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyBNmecVtdU&ab
+ Get acquainted with use of biometric data for humanitarian purposes:
- WFO’s Building Blocks: https://innovation.wfp.org/project/building-blocks
- UNHCR’s identity management program: https://www.unhcr.org/blogs/beyond-the-clip-is-blockchain- the-future-of-humanitarian-aid/
- Masco, Joseph. 2014. “Sensitive but unclassified. Secrecy and the Counterterror State”, in The Theater of Operations. National Security Affect from the Cold War to the War on Terror, pp. 113 - 144.
- Breckenridge, Keith. 2014. Biometric State: The Global Politics of Identification and
Surveillance in South Africa, 1850 to the Present (“The Global Biometric Arena” – focus on pp.
11-25) (Optional: “Galtonian reversal: apartheid and the making of biometric citizenship”, pp.
196)
Optional:
- Franke, Mark. 2020. Refugees’ loss of self-determination in UNHCR operations through the gaining of identity in blockchain technology, Politics, Groups, Identities, pp. 1-15
PART III – SURVEILLANCE
Week 11 – May 12. Biosecurity, Risk and Global Epidemics
Are fear and panic an inevitable consequence of the spread of diseases? What are the biopolitical and social effects of disease surveillance? How do mathematical modeling, predictions, and evidence combined to produce pandemics? What are the risks of normalizing lockdown, curfews, and other control methods in the name of public health?
- Caduff, C. 2015. The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger (introduction and chapter 4 “Experiments of Concern”)
- Caduff, C. 2020. “What Went Wrong: Corona and the World after the Full Stop.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly.
Week 12 – May 19. Post-Panopticism? Surveillance Capitalism
Questions: Is mass surveillance a necessary evil? Is (targeted) government surveillance comparable to the (anonymized) data collection of personal information for commercial reasons? And how anonymous (or sensitive) is this surveillance? How to ensure that surveillance and monitoring techniques are not misused?
- Zuboff, S. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (selections)
- Simon, Bart. 2005. “The Return of Panopticism: Supervision, Subjection and the New Surveillance,”
Surveillance & Society 3(1), pp. 1-20.
Optional:
- Marx, Gary T. 1988. The New Surveillance. In Undercover: Police surveillance in America.
University of California Press: 206-233.
Week 13 – May 26. Data surveillance: Big Data, Social Media
Does data mining, artificial intelligence, machine learning or automated surveillance change how we know each other and what others know about you? Is this a new era of (automated) surveillance?
How accurate are predictive analytics?
- Lyon, David. 2010. “Liquid Surveillance: The Contribution of Zygmunt Bauman to Surveillance Studies.” International Political Sociology 4, pp. 325-338.
- Esposti, Sara Degli. 2014. “When big data meets dataveillance: the hidden side of analytics”, Surveillance & Society 12(2), pp. 209-225
- Angwin, Julia. 2015. Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance (“Leaving Google”; “Introducing Ida”; “Opting Out”)
Optional:
- Thatcher, Jim, David O’Sullivan, and Dillon Mahmoudi. 2016. “Data Colonialism through Accumulation by Dispossession: New Metaphors for Daily Data.” Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space 34(6): 900-1006.
- Andrejevic, M. “Exploitation in the Data Mine”, in Fuchs, C. et al. 2012. Internet and Surveillance.
The Challenges of Web 2.0 and Social Media, pp. 71-87.
Week 14 – June 2. Surveillance Futures: War and Work (Wrap-up session).
How is work and war being reconfigured by recourse to new surveillance technologies, from drones to algorithmic? Can we go beyond the “black box” of algorithms, and can their
predictive logics potentially subverted? With increasingly invasive monitoring technologies – from keystroke logging to remote tracking – are these two sides of the same coin in a war against workers?
Focus on one of the two sets of texts:
Drones
- Gusterson, Hugh. 2016. Drone. Remote Control Warfare (“Remote Intimacy”), pp. 59-81.
- Parks, Lisa and Caren Kaplan (ed.). 2017. Life in the Age of Drone Warfare (“Vertical Mediation and the U.S. drone war in the horn of Africa”), pp. 134-157.
Algorithms
- Rosenblat, Alex and Luke Stark. 2016. “Algorithmic Labor and information Asymmetries: A Case of Uber’s Drivers.” International Journal of Communication 10: 3758-84.
- West, Emily. 2019. “Amazon: Surveillance as a Service.” Surveillance & Society 17(1/2): 27-33.
