Surveillance and Society

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the topic of surveillance in Central and Eastern Europe covering Pre-and-Post Communist realms of everyday life. The class dialogue will be focused on the analysis of historical rhetoric of surveillance and its wide range of tools used to gain social control and that of its individual members. We will focus on the comparative analysis of different methods of social control practice employed by select former communist states (mainly Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany) during communism and after its fall. As it may appear that the communist organs of state surveillance, namely: StB in Czechoslovakia, Stasi in East Germany, and SB in Poland, ceased to exist with the fall of the totalitarian system, one could argue that the new mechanisms of social control continue to emerge, but this time offering no visible borders for one to easily escape from. Indeed, the faces of post-communist surveillance will be discussed from more inclusive perspective, touching upon the global resonance of 9/11, when surveillance has been legitimatized as a tool of social order and also openly questioned by individuals such as Edward Snowden. Moreover, surveillance today and the invasion of one’s privacy faces threats from many “little brothers” rather just only the state itself. Therein this course will probe several issues emerging from different types of relationships between the latest technologies and our society, as they may be used by those in power to cultivate the culture of social control, fear, and empowerment.