Journal article
Constructing Empowerment Through Interpretations of Environmental Surveillance Data
Surveillance & society, v 8(2)
01 Jan 2010
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Environmental surveillance data-in particular, data from air monitoring conducted by grassroots community groups-is presumed to empower community members with respect to neighboring industrial facilities; furthermore, extensions of data-collecting ability are assumed to represent expansions of empowerment. This paper challenges the idea that empowerment follows from the collection of copious surveillance data, arguing instead that the degree and kind of empowerment environmental surveillance supports is determined by the manner in which surveillance data is made meaningful. Examining contrasting interpretations of environmental surveillance data, the paper shows how they variously construct empowerment in terms of the power to define issues, the power to enforce laws, and the power to choose. The three forms of empowerment vary in the level at which they enable community groups to act-suggesting that the empowering potential of surveillance rests in large part on strategic interpretive choices.
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Details
- Title
- Constructing Empowerment Through Interpretations of Environmental Surveillance Data
- Creators
- Gwen Ottinger - University of Washington Bothell
- Publication Details
- Surveillance & society, v 8(2)
- Publisher
- Surveillance Studies Network
- Number of pages
- 14
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Politics
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000210417800008
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-80053353680
- Other Identifier
- 991021863487604721
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- Web of Science research areas
- Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary