Surveillance studies and violence against women

Abstract

Surveillance, privacy and security are of paramount concern to technology users. One of the implications of these new forms of technologized surveillance that has received little attention is their implications for women fleeing violent situations. This article seeks to place questions of surveillance technologies into a theoretical framework that foregrounds the challenges that new surveillance technologies pose to anti-violence movements. Specifically we address the impact of surveillance technologies in the practice of violence and some proposed solutions, and consider the ways that surveillance technologies are used disproportionately in the criminalization of marginalized groups. By placing violence against women at the centre of our analysis we aim to complicate concerns related to surveillance technologies. © The author(s), 2012.