State Surveillance in the 20th Century - Detailseite

Surveillance is one of the most sensitive and controversial topics of our age. At the latest since the 2013 NSA "leaks", the email surveillance practices of intelligence authorities have caused indignation and led to warnings about an imminent "technological totalitarianism". In contrast to these presentist debates, the seminar roots surveillance in the birth of the modern state in the 18th century. Therefore, it does not conceptualize state data collection on citizens exclusively in the framework of control and repression, but rather as a basic administrative and state field of action that was shaped and extended by technological revolutions, socio-technical change and, at least in post-1945 Western societies, resistance and quests for transparency.

In the seminar we will first explore academic conceptualizations of surveillance in view of the modern and the postmodern age. Secondly, we will analyze surveillance as well as its particular political, societal and technological contexts through the use of case studies. These will cover totalitarian regimes and liberal democracies, approaching both police and  intelligence activities as well as data collection and processing linked to wider state activities, i.e. growth of the welfare state. A special focus will be laid on the effects of digitalization on surveillance from the 1960s onwards.

Toni Weller: The Information State: A Historical Perspective on Surveillance. In: Kirstie Ball, Kevin Haggerty, David Lyon (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies. Routledge 2012, pp. 57-63