Issue co-edited by :

Evelyne Barthou, Associate Professor, Sociology, TREE, Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour and Yann Bruna, Associate Professor, Sociology, Sophiapol, Université Paris-Nanterre

Presentation of the journal

Terrains/Théories is a multidisciplinary peer reviewed social sciences Journal articulating conceptualization and empirical research. It aims to create a crossroads between sociology, anthropology and philosophy. It assumes that political philosophy – in the broadest sense – must today transcend a purely conceptual approach to politics by approaching social sciences, while it is becoming increasingly important for the latter to clarify theoretical choices that can guide research practices and field surveys.

More information here: https://teth.revues.org/

Presentation of the special issue

The media coverage of the last few years has highlighted a fact that is difficult to dispute: the territories and practicalities of surveillance are expanding, while analogies between seemingly unprecedented social realities (e.g. China's social credit system or the geolocation tracking of Covid-19 sufferers) and the major dystopian literary works of the last century abound. The societies of control and paroxysmal visibility of the others, depicted by Aldous Huxley (1932), George Orwell (1949) and Philip K. Dick (1956), can no longer be considered exclusively fictional. More recently, series such as Black Mirror illustrate, in hyperconnected societies, a plurality of surveillance practices that have never been seen before, as they are mostly observed on a micro sociological and therefore inter-individual scale.

How the digital age is amplifying surveillance

Over the last few decades, the spread of information and communication technologies to a wide variety of audiences on the one hand, and the associated possibilities for data collection and processing on the other, have indeed played a clear part in the development of new forms, practices and modalities of surveillance, which generate new publics of surveillants and surveilled. More diversified, more intrusive, more systematic, or even more automatic, contemporary surveillance is often the subject of a “rhetoric of the superlative” (Castagnino 2018 : 18). Propelled by Big Data, predictive algorithms (Cardon, 2015) and all the devices that enable data to be collected (cookies, RFID chips, GPS, APIs, etc.), this “surveillance 2.0” is often described, in seminal works, as “dataveillance” (Clarke, 1988) and more recently “omniveillance” (Blackman, 2019). Indeed, in the digital age, surveillance is said to impose itself “in every institutional sphere of our existence” (Ball et al., 2012: 1), giving it an inevitable character while multiplying the field of possibilities in terms of information gathering. This disruptive dimension with “traditional” forms of surveillance, which have always existed in social space, is notably theorized in the work of Gary Marx (2002), according to whom new technologies should not be portrayed as responsible for surveillance, but rather as the conditions for its exacerbation and intensification.

This early research gave rise to surveillance studies, which aims to account for the “culture of surveillance” (Lyon, 2017) at work in contemporary societies, and primarily mobilizes the theories of Foucault and then Deleuze to analyze it (Denis and Kessous, 2012). Nevertheless, while the academic literature on surveillance in the digital age has become abundant over the last two decades, it remains essentially English-speaking and, above all, particularly focused. Research on government surveillance (Mattelart and Vitalis, 2014; Higgs, 2004; Agar, 2003; Ericsson and Haggerty, 1997), the commodification of surveillance by data controllers and data brokers in particular (Zuboff, 2020; Human and Cech, 2021) or employer-employee surveillance in the labor sector (Ball, 2010; Alge and Hansen, 2014; Ajunwa et al, 2017), including in academia (Tréguet and Mirman, 2022), are both the most numerous and the most visible. Empirical studies focusing on inter-individual forms of surveillance, which are of interest to us here, on the other hand, remain distinctly underrepresented.

Focusing on inter-individual surveillance practices

In Les théories de la surveillance (2020), Olivier Aïm highlights the downplaying of certain social and cultural forms of surveillance. This is particularly true of surveillance between people, initially described as “lateral” in the seminal work of Mark Andrejevic (2007). The latter also paved the way for Daniel Trottier's empirical research into what he describes as “interpersonal” surveillance in social media (2012). Drawing on Giddens' (1985) theoretical model of the “dialectic of control”, Alice Marwick also speaks of a domestication of the uses of surveillance, which she describes as “social and reciprocal” within an increasingly connected population (2012). It also emerges that, while “social surveillance” is certainly by no means new, the possibilities for informational collection on others are today far more diversified and intrusive in the digital age, especially as they are now driven by design choices that put presence checks at the forefront within communicational platforms (Ajordan and Ricciardelli, 2018; Marwick and boyd, 2014; Dunn and Langlais, 2020).

A few recent studies are gradually exploring these specific surveillance practices, for example through the prism of parenthood. Inter-individual surveillance would thus be justified by a parental desire for transparency in the face of the opacity of children's digital uses (Dupin, 2018; Havard Duclos and Pasquier, 2018), by a search for security that leads even to their geolocation in real time (Widmer and Albrechtslund, 2021; Mavoa et al, 2023) or by the desire to verify the correspondence between the child's discourse and what is actually revealed by the tool, concerning for example his school results (Louessard, 2016) or his geolocation (Bruna, 2022). However, as we shall see below, much remains to be explored, including in the context of parental monitoring. Whether we're talking about the many forms of surveillance between young individuals and/or within couples (checking one's position, the other's online and offline activity, the time of the last message sent, etc.) or the possibility of tracing one's elders (right down to their “well-being” or even health data), these practices are, with the exception of the publications cited above, also very little investigated by the social sciences.

However, they underline a strong tension between individual freedom, the injunction to participate online and the acceptance of various forms of social control - including by peers, largely digital, what some refer to as the “privacy paradox” (Barnes, 2006; Hoadley et al., 2009), i.e. the fact that individuals are torn between concern for their privacy, accompanied by the desire to ensure that their personal data is not unduly exploited, stored or disseminated, and the desire to enjoy the benefits of these new technologies, which are real markers of their personal and relational lifestyles (Pras, 2012). It therefore seems essential to us today not only to identify the new forms and practices of surveillance, but also to analyze the social relationships they underline, the meaning they have for actors and the social issues they highlight. Because inter-individual surveillance is fully part of the “least thought of” aspects of surveillance studies, it would benefit from more in-depth study, based on the following four axes.

Suggested lines of research to enrich the literature and fill identified gaps

Contributions may be submitted in one of the following four areas, or in any combination of them, and may be written in French or English.

1. First, a major issue in the social uses of surveillance undoubtedly lies in understanding what surveillance means. According to Leman-Langlois, surveillance is “a process of acquiring information about social objects, the aim of which is to obtain a benefit beyond the mere gathering of information” (2011). However, this definition cannot be considered fully satisfactory, as it fails to identify the contours and limits of surveillance. Let's take parental surveillance as an example : behind the same term, it can mean passively checking juvenile digital practices in a simple informational collection, constraining them in terms of possibilities or temporality, or acting on infantile uses of devices to orient them towards parental reference values considered more legitimate (Havard Duclos and Pasquier, 2018 ; Fontar et al., 2018 ; Barthou and Lachance, 2019). In this context, what does monitoring mean in the discourse of those who observe, and in that of those who are observed ? Which ordinary tool practices are assimilated to surveillance, and which are excluded ?

2. Now that the use of tools and applications that support interpersonal surveillance has been studied at length in the information and communication sciences, we need to understand the extent to which the appropriation and effects of these technologies reveal social relationships, particularly those of gender and class (Jacques, 2017). Understanding who monitors whom, for what purposes, from what age or up to what age(s), and what is at stake through these verifications of the other's online and offline presence, depending on whether he or she is a child, spouse, friend or colleague, therefore seems to us to represent a major interest in the sociology of the digital. More so as the informational asymmetry resulting from the acquisition of knowledge about the movements and activities of a traced individual could also lead to relationships of domination, or at the very least amplify pre-existing ones. What's more, while several studies show that women (Livingstone and Davidson, 2019), and more specifically young working-class women, are more closely monitored and invited to self-containment in their online exposure (Clair, 2007 ; Blanchard and Hancock, 2017 ; Déage, 2018), how do they cope with the multiplication of presence checks to which they are subject in the digital age ? For them as for others, to what extent can knowledge of this surveillance and the deployment of specific technical skills to deal with it (Granjon et al., 2009) weigh in on this asymmetry between the surveillant and the surveilled ? What strategies of concealment or circumvention might be at work to “resist” this surveillance, or even unbalance this relationship of domination (Tréguet, 2015) via under- or counter- surveillance (Aïm, 2023) ?

3. We would also like to explore in greater depth the implications of surveillance. Referring once again to the Leman-Langlois definition, and in continuity with the previous axis, surveillance would bring a benefit, which would appear to be manifest on the side of the person doing the watching. Let's take the context of parental surveillance again : the informational gain is certainly important, but less so than the response to a security imperative (Mavoa et al., 2023). However, by extension, the surveilled could also feel themselves to be the beneficiaries of this monitoring, as Clément Rivière (2017) shows regarding the internalization by young girls of gendered vulnerabilities in urban space, who for some justify needing to be watched - and find themselves reassured by it - precisely because they are girls. This approach is even more interesting given that the social reception of surveillance is rarely positive : the focus is more on its inappropriate uses as well as its negative effects, particularly through the prism of privacy (Nissenbaum, 2015 ; Rallet and Rochelandet, 2011). So, what forms of surveillance appear socially acceptable ? Which must necessarily be justified, and in what ways ? Are surveillance practices the subject of negotiation between the individuals who use them, for example within families or peer groups ? Which practices tend to be hidden, invisibilized ? Which, on the contrary, benefit from being visible and explicit ?

4. In light of all the above questions and the social issues they raise, thinking about non-surveillance is just as important. In this context of accelerating surveillance, and when the tools of surveillance are available to those who want to use them, who chooses not to monitor, why, and what does this mean ? Can non-surveillance be seen as an ethical or even militant choice, a desire to respect the freedom of others, or a marker of trust and empowerment ? At the same time, can it also be perceived as irresponsibility or disinterest ?

Submission Process

The deadline for proposals submission is February 1^st, 2024. They should be sent to the coeditors of the issue : Evelyne Barthou (evelyne.barthou@univ-pau.fr) and Yann Bruna (ybruna@parisnanterre.fr).

Proposals should present :

• a title;

• an abstract of approximately 5000 characters;

• Author(s) data such as complete name, institution, function, professional address, phone number and e-mail address.

The editorial board will proceed to selection and inform the authors of the selected proposals by March 1^st, 2024. The authors are kindly requested to respect the editorial guidelines of the journal that can be found online (https://teth.revues.org/501).

The articles expected are of a format of 45 000 to 60 000 signs (spaces, notes and bibliography included) and must be submitted no later than June 15^th, 2024 for a publication number in June 2025.

The items will receive a double-blind evaluation.

For all further information, please contact the publishing Secretariat : laurent.afresne@sciencespo.fr

Giddens Anthony, Profiles & Critiques in Social Theory, London, Red Globe Press, 1982.

Zuboff Shoshana, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight For a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, London, Profile Books, 2019.