Security and technology

Abstract

Within urban anthropology, scholars working on fear of crime have shed light on how measures taken in the name of security shape contemporary cities and the experiences of their inhabitants. Walls and gates, alongside other markers of socio-spatial separation, have featured prominently in the literature concerned with urban insecurity. Drawing on our research in the cities of Kingston, Jamaica, and Recife, Brazil, this chapter aims to add to these debates by focusing on another kind of materiality: the various technological devices implemented in the name of security that have come to characterize urban landscapes across the world. Exploring the anticipated and actual uses of surveillance cameras, microphones and analogue radios, we draw on insights from science and technology studies to understand how such devices can work as border objects that connect state and non-state security providers for policing objectives. More broadly, we problematize framings of technology as neutral fixes to urban insecurity, highlighting the politics in which they are embedded.