Introductory description

You are being watched and measured. And you are not alone. For over a century, a global web of state, commercial, and individual surveillance has observed and measured an ever-widening variety of bodies, situations, and spaces. As our bodies have become legible to authorities and to ourselves, they have come to serve as identity documents, markers of kinship, and signs of entitlement or otherness. This module will explore the ways in which new ideas, knowledge and technologies have enabled states, societies and individuals to identify and assess their citizens, police their borders, and generate self-knowledge. From the invention of the ‘average man’ in the 19th century to the rise of home DNA testing kits and biometric passports, we will look at what it means to ‘measure up’ in modern society, and ask: how, when and where should our bodies be subjected to measurement, by whom, and for what purposes? Case studies will include fingerprinting, DNA profiling, and the all-too-familiar bathroom scale; others will be selected by students.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1. Introduction: What is counted counts.
Week 2: Who counts? The Observant State
Week 3. Measurement and Surveillance in Empire
Week 4. Measurement and Surveillance at the Border
Week 5: Measuring and Making Ourselves
Week 6. READING WEEK
Week 7. Life in the 'Counting House': Weighing up
Week 8. Life in the 'Counting House': Student Selected Component on Home Testing
Week 9. Life in the 'Counting House': Student Selected Component on Domestic BiometricTechnologies and State/Commercial Appropriation
Week 10. Conclusion: 'Count me out' and the Politics of 'Informed Refusal'

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the history of key surveillance technologies and modalities
• Analyse and evaluate the impact of measurement on the generation of social and political norms;
• Identify, research and analyse physical objects and/or visual representations as primary source material to generate new ideas and interpretations
• Communicate the findings of independent research, adapting it to the needs of diverse audiences
• Analyse and evaluate the contributions made by historical and interdisciplinary scholarship to understandings of bodily surveillance as state-making;

Indicative reading list

Reading lists can be found in Talis

Research element

Students will incorporate primary research with material or visual culture into their applied tasks and essays

Interdisciplinary

We will be using secondary readings from history, political science, legal studies criminology, and sociology.

International

We will be examine the impact of surveillance technologies in the British empire, the USA, and Latin America; and of bordering technologies in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Europe and the UK.

Subject specific skills

Primary source analysis.
Research involving secondary literature.
Presentation of work orally and in multimedia or essay form.

Transferable skills

Communication of original research and analysis to diverse audiences;

Critical analysis of media representations of controversial topics AND/OR critical analysis of the embedded assumptions of physical objects, e.g. oximeters, height/weight tables, etc.;

Improved awareness of the role of STEM in shaping cultural and embodied norms of selfhood and citizenship, and reciprocally the role of political and cultural factors in shaping STEM.