The SSN Book Award Committee is delighted to announce that the winner of the 2020 SSN Book Award is:

Insurgent Aesthetics. Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War (Duke UP) by Dr. Ronak K. Kapadia, Associate Professor in Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The Book Award Committee found Dr. Kapadia’s book to be a theoretically sophisticated, empirically fascinating, and beautifully illustrated contribution that pushes the field of surveillance studies forward.

From the publisher:

In Insurgent Aesthetics Ronak K. Kapadia theorizes the world-making power of contemporary art responses to US militarism in the Greater Middle East. He traces how new forms of remote killing, torture, confinement, and surveillance have created a distinctive post-9/11 infrastructure of racialized state violence. Linking these new forms of violence to the history of American imperialism and conquest, Kapadia shows how Arab, Muslim, and South Asian diasporic multimedia artists force a reckoning with the US war on terror’s violent destruction and its impacts on immigrant and refugee communities. Drawing on an eclectic range of visual, installation, and performance works, Kapadia reveals queer feminist decolonial critiques of the US security state that visualize subjugated histories of US militarism and make palpable what he terms “the sensorial life of empire.” In this way, these artists forge new aesthetic and social alliances that sustain critical opposition to the global war machine and create alternative ways of knowing and feeling beyond the forever war.

The committee would also like to recognize Pacifying the Homeland: Intelligence Fusion and Mass Supervision (University of California Press) by Dr. Brendan McQuade as runner-up for the 2020 Book Award.

Dr. McQuade’s book tells a fascinating story of how intelligence fusion centers are becoming a generalized apparatus for the mass supervision and pacification in the United States. The committee considered many excellent books, and it was truly difficult to select a single winner. We thank all nominated authors for their contributions to surveillance studies.

Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) are delighted to announce that the winner of the SSN Book Award 2019 is:

Policing Indigenous Movements: Dissent and the Security State, by Andrew Crosby and Jeffrey Monaghan, published by Fernwood Press (2018).

Read more ›

Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) are delighted to announce that the winner of the SSN Book Award 2018 is:

Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America by Josh Lauer, Columbia University Press

We received several book nominations for the award. The quality of all nominated books was outstanding. Creditworthy was chosen as the winner by a panel of judges who were impressed by its empirical depth and analytical sharpness. The book should be of interest to all surveillance scholars around the globe.

Condensed and paraphrased from the publisher page:

Creditworthy is the first comprehensive history of credit bureaus, which today are multi-billion-dollar corporations that track our movements, spending behavior, and financial status. The book explores the evolution of credit reporting from its nineteenth-century origins to the rise of the modern consumer data industry. By revealing the sophistication of early credit reporting networks, Creditworthy highlights the leading role that commercial surveillance has played—ahead of state surveillance systems—in monitoring the economic lives of citizens.

The Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) invites nominations (including self-nominations) for the annual Surveillance Studies Book Award 2018.

The award is given in recognition of an outstanding monograph on surveillance published during the preceding year. We are currently inviting nominations for 2018 (*books with a ‘2017’ copyright date).

• Single or multi-authored works are eligible, but not edited volumes.
• The winner/s will be announced in late 2018.
• The winner/s will be honored at the 2020 SSN conference.

The winner will receive an award amount of £100 (to be split among authors if there is more than one), as well as a 1-year membership for the Surveillance Studies Network (SSN), which provides benefits including discounts on all SSN-sponsored conferences and events.

The deadline for nominations and the receipt of three (3) books from the publisher is 9^th July 2018. Please note, books will not be returned.

Using the subject heading “SSN Book Award 2018,” please email the committee chair, Kevin Walby (k.walby@uwinnipeg.ca) to nominate a book. Please include the title of the book, year of publication, author, publishing house, and a paragraph of no more than 300 words detailing specifics about why this book would be suitable for the award.

We require three (3) copies of each book for the prize committee. Have one copy sent to each of the following postal addresses:

• William G. Staples, Department of Sociology, The University of Kansas, 1415 Jayhawk Blvd., 716 Fraser Hall Lawrence, Kansas, United States, 66045-754
• Jennifer R. Whitson, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo 2045 PAS Building, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1
• Kevin Walby, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Winnipeg, Centennial Hall, 3rd Floor, 515 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, R3B 2E9, Phone: 204-786-9105