Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Impact of New Security Technologies on Urban Life

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Security apparatuses are rapidly changing because of advances in technology. Scientists have established that like all new technologies, security systems can have important social and cultural impacts for the communities in which they are adopted. New security paradigms, and the privatization of security services, offer an opportunity for anthropological science to evaluate the socio-cultural variation in methods of social regulation and the efficacy of these technologies in abating crime. This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous, scientifically grounded fieldwork, explores what impact these new security technologies are having on urban life, and how the implementation of these technologies and the form that they take is influenced cultural and social variability.University of California, Irvine doctoral student Kimberley McKinson, under the guidance of Dr. William Maurer will explore how contemporary notions of home security are shaped both by new technologies as well as by the social, historical and material legacies of regulation and discipline. Understanding urban residential life requires more than taking into account macro-level economic, legal and state discourses and practices. As such, the researcher will examine the production of the securitized home in order to study the ways in which socio-historical memory is being figured and refigured as today's urban dwellers become increasingly more involved in the domain of security and shift between metal, electronic and social modes of security at the spatial scales of the home, neighborhood and city. Data for this project will be collected through ethnographic fieldwork with residents of varying socio-economic backgrounds in their homes and community, with metal artisans in their workshops and at building sites and with private electronic security technicians and staff as they install, repair and design electronic security packages for clients. The researcher will use a variety of qualitative methods that will include participant observation, interviews, movement analysis, photography and videography, sketch-work and document research and archival research. This research project is important because it will recognize the home as a critical site in the study of security and as a way to think about spatial governance in its most domestic and pedestrian manifestation. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, research findings from this project will be useful to academics, policy makers and security specialists who seek to understand a security paradigm as a critical analytic for studying contemporary urban life.