The infrastructures of security : technologies of risk management in Johannesburg / Martin J. Murray

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Murray, Martin Julius, 1945- author.

Series:

African perspectives (University of Michigan. Press)

African perspectives

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Internal security--South Africa--Johannesburg.

Internal security.

Electronic surveillance--South Africa--Johannesburg.

Electronic surveillance.

Security systems--Technological innovations--South Africa--Johannesburg.

Security systems.

Crime prevention--South Africa--Johannesburg.

Crime prevention.

Segregation--South Africa--Johannesburg.

Segregation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (479 pages)

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2022.

Summary:

Much of the South African government's response to crime--especially in Johannesburg--has been to rely increasingly on technology. This includes the widespread use of video cameras, Artificial Intelligence, machine-learning, and automated systems, effectively replacing human watchers with machine watchers. The aggregate effect of such steps is to determine who is, and isn't, allowed to be in public spaces--essentially another way to continue segregation. In The Infrastructures of Security, author Martin J. Murray concentrates on not only the turn toward technological solutions to managing the risk of crime through digital (and software-based) surveillance and automated information systems, but also the introduction of somewhat bizarre and fly-by-night experimental "answers" to perceived risk and danger. Digitalized surveillance is significant for two reasons: first, it enables monitoring to take place across wide "geographical distances with little time delay"; and second, it allows for the active sorting, identification, and "tracking of bodies, behaviors, and characteristics of subject populations on a continuous, real-time basis." These new software-based surveillance technologies represent monitoring, tracking, and information gathering without walls, towers, or guards.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Abbreviations

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

Chapter One. Policing the Post-Liberal City: Paradoxes and Contradictions

Chapter Two. Johannesburg in the Geographic Imagination: Agoraphobia and Other Obsessions

Chapter Three. Vulnerable Bodies: Self-Protection in a Risky World

Chapter Four. The Surveillant Assemblage: The Hyper-Panoptic Imagination

Chapter Five. The CCTV Surveillance Revolution [With Nicky Falkof]

Chapter Six. Colliding Worlds in Microcosm

Chapter Seven. Security by Design: Spatial Management in the Hypermodern City

Epilogue 1. Jane Alexander Security Exhibition

Epilogue 2. Mosquito Lightning [Carla Busuttil and Gary Charles]

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 367-436) and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

Other Format:

Print version: Murray, Martin The Infrastructures of Security

ISBN:

9780472220403

0472220403