Event Date: October 30, 2023 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: FSS 4004, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa
Presented by CIPS
Development discourses, from modernisation to Sustainable Development Goals, have been scrutinised from many perspectives, such as colonial, gender-based, and dependency relations. With the substantial digital transformation of our societies, development programmes have extended their goals to close the digital divide, use ICTs for development, and increase access to the global flow of information. In line with the promotion of technological transfer, ICTs are also seen as emancipatory solutions to complex socio-political and economic challenges. Parallel to these developments, we are witnessing a global turn to authoritarianism, where authoritarian political forms are not the exceptions to a general move towards democracy but rather stable political constellations. Digital development, and especially the development of digital infrastructure, poses a historical chance for these regimes to integrate surveillance capacities within these systems. In this talk, I will highlight such dilemmas using the example of Iran’s development of its National Internet Network and using surveillance capacities produced through the interoperable national ID databanks and the vast network of CCTV cameras in urban areas. The talk situates these cases in the global contestations between dominant discourses of digital development and shows how the dynamics outside Western-dominated digital governance institutions shape Global South to South and South to East collaboration and inspirations.
Speaker:
Dr. Azadeh Akbari is Assistant Professor in Public Administration and digital Transformation at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on authoritarian surveillance and critical studies of ICTs in development. She is a member of the board of directors at the International Surveillance Studies Network and has also founded Surveillance in the Global South Research Network to expand the scope of surveillance studies to include non-Western discourses and practices and create a place for exchange, collaboration, and activism against the undemocratic use of surveillance technologies. Dr. Azadeh Akbari was a journalist for many years and worked as a communication manager and community outreach specialist at the UNHCR, UNICEF, and the British Council. She is a contributor to many leading media outlets, including The Guardian and CNN, commenting on Internet governance and surveillance technologies in authoritarian regimes. She is the co-editor of two upcoming books on Critical ICT4D (Information & Communication Technology for Development) by Routledge with Silvia Masiero, and the International Handbook of Critical Surveillance Studies by Edward Elgar with Murakami Wood, van Brakel, & Bruno. Azadeh Akbari is also the digital editor for the journals Surveillance & Society and Territory, Politics, Governance. Dr. Azadeh Akbari studied sociology (BA) and journalism in Iran and gender research (MSc) at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. She obtained her PhD in human geography from the University of Heidelberg, studying surveillance as spatial injustice. Her postdoctoral work at the University of Münster’s political geography group focused on scrutinising the link between political systems and digital governance in authoritarian contexts.
Moderator:
David Murakami Wood is a Professor of Critical Surveillance and Security Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa.
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