The cultural labor of surveillance: video forensics,computational objectivity,and the production of visual evidence

This essay argues that the status of video evidence as an index of real events—a sign or representation that offers a direct, empirical connection to material reality—is the result of an intentional process of production. This process involves the repurposing of new technologies borrowed from the domain of creative media production in order to transform a chaotic field of raw surveillance video into useable evidence. In addition to the exchange in technologies, an unavoidable epistemological and interpretive exchange takes place between evidentiary uses of surveillance video on the one hand, and the now prevalent forms of surveillant narration found in both fictional and reality-based storytelling. But despite this exchange in meanings and technical systems, considerable effort has gone in to establish formal standards for the evidentiary uses of surveillance video that distinguish the discovery of video evidence from the production of creative content. Building on Daston and Gallison's historical study of the prevailing “epistemic virtues” that have defined objectivity over time, I argue that what we see emerging in the field of forensic video analysis, as a means of establishing its scientific and legal status, is a commitment to a new epistemic virtue of “computational objectivity.”     

Discourses of popular politics,war and authenticity in Turkish pop music

Turkey and the United States (US) have had a close mutually beneficial political and military relationship since the end of World War Two. However, this relationship came under pressure when the US government and Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) tried to cooperate closely in the 2003 military invasion of Iraq. AKP's leadership failed to persuade Turkey's parliament to accept the deployment of US troops and equipment in Turkey partially due to public opinion. Despite Turkish media and its government being intertwined to the extent where subversive discourses are all but silenced, some popular music videos were able to articulate discourses which questioned AKP's military policies. This paper analyses lyrics, visuals and sounds of one of these songs to look at the way war and political issues become articulated through a form of simplified popular politics, despite being presented as serious and authentic by a number of key signifiers across the different modes. A number of scholars have addressed the issue of subversion in music both as actual political challenge and as popular counter culture. This case study is used to assess subversion in music in these terms in order to consider its likely place in political debate in Turkey.     

Theorising Power and Resistance among “Travellers”

This paper (re-)examines the literature on Traveller communities in the United Kingdom by combining parts of Michel Foucault's and Michel de Certeau's theoretical legacies. Following an ethnographic summary, I demonstrate the relevance of Foucault and Certeau for a critical understanding of the Travellers’ structural predicaments and ideological resistance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I argue that Foucault's outline of modern power, surveillance and classification sheds new light on the impact of social control agencies and the implementation of legislative changes, such as the 1968 Caravan Sites Act, on (semi-)nomadic and/or self-employed groups. The implications of more recent legal developments are discussed as symptoms of postmodernity and the further ideological marginalisation of “non-consuming nomads”. I then argue that some of Certeau's key concepts, including the “strategies/tactics” distinction, illuminate the Travellers’ modalities of resistance and symbolisms of difference. Completing a two-way dynamic between theory and data, the article also shows that existing empirical material on Travellers highlights some of the weaknesses in Foucault's and Certeau's respective thought. Finally, I turn to Foucault's “analytics” to account for intra-group power and resistance, and hence to challenge the common portrayal of Foucault as a “theorist of domination” in juxtaposition to Certeau as a “theorist of subversion”.     

Bodies,Materials, Practice: Habiting Space and the Representational Limits of Latour's Semiotics of Assemblies

This article identifies an emerging interest in actor-network theory (ANT) within spatial studies and its significance to social semiotics. It questions the usefulness of borrowing ANT for spatial analyses, arguing that ANT is a representational theory of knowledge rooted in a Chomskyan theory of competence and that this produces an impoverished conception of practice within spatial production. To illustrate this contention, a letter describing the Elliott household in 1860s Adelaide is examined as a programme for visiting the Elliott home. A comparison is then made between Latour's programme and Lefebvre's dialectic of spatial production. It is noted that the constituent elements of the programme, association and substitution, are analogous to Lefebvre's concepts of representations of space and representational spaces, respectively. However, since the programme does not offer any corresponding third element to match spatial practice, an ANT-informed interpretation of spatiality is criticised for bifurcating competence from performance and universalising a particular competence.     

Post-9/11 counterterrorism in popular culture: the spectacle and reception of The Bourne Ultimatum and 24

This article examines the representation of counterterrorism in contemporary film and television and surveys its reception among active online audiences. Contemporary counterterrorism fiction like The Bourne Ultimatum (2007 The Bourne ultimatum. 2007. Film. Directed by Paul Greengrass. Produced by Doug Liman, Henry Morrison and Jeffrey M. Weiner. USA.  [Google Scholar]; Film. Directed by Paul Greengrass) and the TV series 24 (2001–2010; Television series. Created by Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow), present viewers with conventional hero-driven narratives wrapped in a spectacle of high-tech surveillance technologies. As counterterrorism is an inherently covert exercise, the widespread popularity of these Hollywood franchises raises questions about how the public understands the capabilities and ethics of counterterrorism. These questions are addressed through an analysis of the generic and aesthetic features of the texts along with a survey of audience responses on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).     

Dot-PPA-ELISA对猪丹毒的免疫监测及抗体保护效价的测定

用猪瘟、猪肺疫、猪丹毒三联疫苗和猪丹毒 1a、2型氢氧化铝吸附甲醛灭活疫苗分别免疫断奶仔猪 ,采用Dot PPA ELISA监测免疫猪血清抗体变化。结果 ,弱毒疫苗免疫后第 7d猪丹毒血清抗体效价开始升高 ,第 2～ 3周达最高值 ;灭活疫苗免疫后第 3～ 4周抗体效价达最高值 ,且灭活疫苗免疫猪的抗体水平明显高于三联疫苗免疫猪。免疫 6周后 ,用C4 30 0 4 (1a型 )、C4 3179(1b型 )和C4 3 12 (2型 ) 3株不同血清型的猪丹毒混合强毒同时对不同抗体效价的免疫猪和对照猪进行了皮肤内接种攻毒 ,并根据其皮肤和体温反应确定 1∶32为猪能抵抗混合强毒攻击的抗体保护效价。经对 4 4头 5 0～ 6 0日龄未免疫的断奶仔猪血清检测 ,其抗体效价在 1∶32以下的猪占88.36 % ,2 78头免疫猪血清的抗体效价在 1∶32或以上的猪占 92 .81%。表明Dot PPA ELISA适用于猪群猪丹毒的免疫监测和免疫力测定。     

Estimating the Skull‐to‐Camera Distance from Facial Photographs for Craniofacial Superimposition

The overlay of a skull and a face image for identification purposes requires similar subject‐to‐camera distances (SCD) to be used at both photographic sessions so that differences in perspective do not compromise the anatomical comparisons. As the facial photograph is the reference standard, it is crucial to determine its SCD first and apply this value to photography of the skull. So far, such a method for estimating the SCD has been elusive (some say impossible), compromising the technical validity of the superimposition procedure. This paper tests the feasibility of using the palpebral fissure length and a well‐established photographic algorithm to accurately estimate the SCD from the facial photograph. Recordings at known SCD across a 1–10 m range (repeated under two test conditions) demonstrate that the newly formulated method works: a mean SCD estimation error of 7% that translates into <1% perspective distortion error between estimated and actual conditions.     

Human Rights Watch v Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Victim Status,Extraterritoriality and the Search for Principled Reasoning

In Human Rights Watch v Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office the UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal found that the relevant standard of ‘victim status’ that applies in secret surveillance cases consists in a potential risk of being subjected to surveillance and that the European Convention on Human Rights does not apply to the surveillance of individuals who reside outside of the UK. This note argues that the Tribunal's finding regarding the victim status of the applicants was sound but that the underlying reasoning was not. It concludes that the Tribunal's finding on extraterritoriality is unsatisfactory and that its engagement with the European Court of Human Rights case law on the matter lacked depth. Finally, the note considers the defects of the Human Rights Watch case, and the case law on extraterritoriality more generally, against the backdrop of the place of principled reasoning in human rights adjudication.