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

由于技术的进步，安全设备正在迅速变化。科学家们已经确定，像所有新技术一样，安全系统可以对采用它们的社区产生重要的社会和文化影响。 新的安全模式和安全服务的私有化为人类学科学提供了一个机会，以评估社会监管方法的社会文化差异以及这些技术在减少犯罪方面的功效。该项目培训研究生如何进行严格的、有科学依据的实地考察，探讨这些新的安全技术对城市生活的影响，以及这些技术的实施和它们所采取的形式如何受到文化和社会变化的影响。加州大学欧文分校博士生金伯利麦金森，在威廉·毛雷尔博士的指导下，我们将探讨当代家庭安全观念是如何被新技术以及社会、历史和物质遗产的监管和纪律所塑造的。理解城市居民生活需要考虑的不仅仅是宏观层面的经济、法律的和国家话语和实践。因此，研究人员将研究安全化家庭的生产，以研究社会历史记忆被塑造和重塑的方式，因为今天的城市居民越来越多地参与安全领域，并在家庭，社区和城市的空间尺度上在金属，电子和社会安全模式之间进行转变。该项目的数据将通过人种学实地调查收集，调查对象是家庭和社区中不同社会经济背景的居民、车间和建筑工地中的金属工匠以及为客户安装、修理和设计电子安全包的私人电子安全技术人员和工作人员。研究人员将使用各种定性方法，包括参与者观察，访谈，运动分析，摄影和录像，素描工作和文件研究和档案研究。这个研究项目很重要，因为它将认识到家庭是安全研究的关键场所，也是思考空间治理的一种方式。除了为人类学研究生的培训提供资金外，该项目的研究成果还将有助于学术界、决策者和安全专家，他们将寻求理解安全范式，作为研究当代城市生活的批判性分析。

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.