Description
Book SynopsisThe book won the Surveillance Studies Network Book Prize 2014. The book argues that the mobile as a political technology in a broad sense facilitates the global export of the Western concept of individuality. This empowers those subjectivities and mindsets which can adapt to the communication regime of ubiquitous connectivity. Exemplifying two focal points – the use in protests and the surveillance of mobile phones – the book traces political trajectories of mobile phones, just as it provides deep insights into the actual practice of mobile phone use by activists and their surveillance. 50 semi-structured interviews with activists from countries including Brazil, India, Pakistan and Mexico offer a detailed and profound discussion of mobile phone success and failures in different struggles for justice. By situating mobile phone mass dissemination within a political rationality of neoliberalism and its political technology of governmentality, it shows how sovereign rule updates to catch up with the subject’s empowerment through mobile phones. The limits of mobile phone impact on activism are examined, and how it compromises its users when new sovereign means such as data retention or silent SMS surveillance are invoked.
Trade Review«Without any doubt Oliver Leisert’s book proves vital to the field of contemporary aspects of surveillance, the power and media and in the same time provokes to discuss theoretical perspectives on dimensions of modern society.» (Marta Brzezinska, surveillance-studies.org, 24 March 2014)
Table of ContentsContents: Mobile Media – Mobile Phones – Surveillance – Protest – Empowerment – Governmentality – Modalities of Neoliberalism – Activism – Media Studies – International Perspective – SMS – Sovereignty – Government – Social Struggles – Repression – Data Retention – Civil Society – Prepaid Mobile Phones – Secure Communication – Encryption – Grassroots movements.
