Themenheft "Soziotechnische Perspektiven für die Kriminologie" - Special Issue "Sociotechnichal perspectives for criminology"

Content

Zur Einführung in das Themenheft: Über den Mehrwert soziotechnischer Perspektiven für die Kriminologie (German)

Introduction into the special issue: About the value of sociotechnical perspectives for criminology

Simon Egbert & Bettina Paul

"Stalked by the State": GPS surveillance technology and sex offender parolees

Emily I. Troshynski

Based on feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS) frameworks that conceive of technology as both a source and consequence of gendered relations, this paper explores a criminological topic of concern: Global Positioning Systems (GPS) as a tool for the management of sex offender parolees in the community. Previous criminological research on this topic has largely focused on experimental/quantitative projects dedicated to understanding the effectiveness of GPS surveillance technology to curb re-offending patterns. Instead, this paper focuses on narratives with sex offenders in the USA as they articulate their understandings of GPS including their everyday experiences with a technology that tracks and monitors them for life. Therefore, qualitative research with sex offender parolees living with GPS will highlight themes associated with adverse feelings, body modifications, and responsiblisation techniques. Specifically, Donna Haraway´s (1991) cyborg will be used as a metaphor for analysing the sociotechnical relationships to which these participants find themselves involved.

High-frequency trading and the technological constitution of anomie

Benedikt Lehmann

This article addresses the emergence of high-speed algorithmic trading in financial markets by analysing it from a specific criminological perspective of anomie. The drive for speed and automation in trading activities brings with it technical and organisational constitutions of epistemic uncertainty while also shaping new forms of trader subjectivity. Equally, regulation plays a key role in the nature and practice of financial innovations and technological change. In combination with changes in trader subjectivity, these developments constitute a dynamic drive for unlimited and post-human capital accumulation, rendering into existence technical and cultural practices which serve to systemically disavow capitalism´s harmful dynamics.

Discussion Paper

Latour's troublemakers: a contribution to an object-oriented criminology

Stefano Mazzilli-Daechsel

Object-oriented ontology reframes reality as the interplay of "objects", with noprece dence given to the difference between humans and nonhumans. In this article, I treat the work of Bruno Latour as an exemplary expression of this emergent perspective in contemporary continental thought. I argue that Latour´s philosophy is especially interesting for criminology because it theorizes recalcitrance and resistance as ontological features of all beings. After developing this thesis, I discuss its general implications for criminological theory, and its specific ramifications for zemiology, i.e. the study of harm.

Research Report

Big Data in den Tropen. Über die Implementierung 'smarten' Polizierens in Sao Paulo, Brasilien (German)

Big Data in the Tropics: on the implementation of 'smart' policing in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Claudio Altenhain

While social-scientific analysis of policing and surveillance has recently adopted a series of inspirations stemming from the sociology of technology as well as science and technology studies, it must be stated that, for the better part, the corresponding case studies have been conducted in societies of the North Atlantic context (USA/Canada and Western Europe), to the detriment of other regional contexts. In what follows, I would like to address this lacuna by focusing upon the "migration" of a policing software from New York to São Paulo. I will present preliminary results of my field research in Brazil, putting a particular emphasis upon its techno-social implications.

Book reviews:

Julian Genner: Vom Nackt- zum Sicherheitsscanner. Wie Sicherheit zu einer Ware wird (Zurawski)

Torsten Heinemann/Martin G. Weiß (Ed.): An der Grenze. Die biotechnologische Überwachung von Migration (Wolff)

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