Digital geographies of grassroots securitisation

Digital surveillance and securitisation technologies are becoming an increasingly ubiquitous part of everyday lives. Constellations of hand-held devices, smartphone applications and partnerships between police, the security industry and civil society shift responsibility for preventing and recording risk and crimes onto citizens. This development suggests substantial changes to the relationship between state and citizens and is likely to have profound effects on socio-spatial relationships and experiences in place. Until this point, geographers have demonstrated little engagement with these developments. This provocation focuses on particular strengths of theoretical and empirical research traditions in social and cultural geography to suggest ways in which the discipline might constructively engage with the digitisation of citizens’ securitisation practices. It foregrounds four areas in which empirical work on digitally inflected surveillance and securitisation practices will enable a rethinking of key geographical concepts in ways that will further the conceptualisation of digital technology and security. The provocation calls on social and cultural geographers to be mindful of the potential of grassroots securitisation to empower disfranchised communities while considering that these technologies and cognate policies might facilitate the further hollowing out of the state under ongoing processes of neoliberalisation.     

Book reviews

Tham Seong Chee. Social science research in Malaysia, vii, 151pp. Singapore: Graham Brash, 1981.

Anthony Whitten. The gibbons of Siberut. xiii, 207pp., 8 plates. London, etc: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1982. £9.50.

Katrien Polman. The north Moluccas: an annotated bibliography, xx, 192pp. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981. (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐ en Volkenkunde. Bibliographical . Series, 11.) Guilders 30.

J. H. M. C. Boelaars. Head‐hunters about themselves: an ethnographic report from Irian Jaya₃ Indonesia, xv, 296pp., 15 plates, 5 maps. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981. (Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐ en Volkenkunde, 92.) Guilders 90.     

Book reviews

Jan Bank. Katholieken en de Indonesisohe Bevolutie. 576 pp. + 7 pp. English Summary. Baarn: Amboboeken, C19833. CPublikaties van het Katholiek Documeiitatie Centrum, 11.) Guilders 37.50.

Francois Raillon. Les étudiants indonésiens et l'Ordre Nouveau; pplitique et idéologie du Mahasiswa Indonesia (1966–1974). 351 pp. Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1984. (Études Insulindiennes/Archipel, 6.)

Victor T. King. The Maloh of West Kalimantan: an ethnographic study of social inequality and social change among an Indonesian Borneo people. viii, 252pp, 13 plates. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1985. (Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐ en Volken‐kunde, 108.)

S. A. Niessen. Motifs of life in Toba Batak texts and textiles, viii, 249pp. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1985. (Verhandelingen van het Koninklik Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐ en Volkenkunde, 110.)     

The Presentation of Self in Philanthropic Life: The Political Negotiations of the Foundation Program Officer

This paper explores the negotiations of foundation program officers who aim to challenge structural inequality across regional geographies of poverty. Beyond the limits to confronting capitalist relationships of production as discussed in critical philanthropy literature, this paper shows how the professional “grantor–grantee” relationship reproduces institutional structures of power. Through the lens of Erving Goffman's “presentation of self” and data from archival and ethnographic research on immigrant and farmworker funding in California's Central Valley and recent interviews with program staff at large foundations in New York City, the paper suggests that Goffman's concepts of performance, idealization, negative idealization, and disruption expand upon a Gramscian theorization of hegemony by highlighting a micro‐sociology of power. Building consensus among greatly unequal actors and managing idealized stories about poverty and philanthropy, the foundation program officer brokers political opportunity for grassroots organizations and yet more commonly generates consent.     

Book reviews

Cutlass and Crescent Moon: a case study in social and political change in outer Indonesia, by Douglas Miles. Centre for Asian Studies, University of Sydney 1976, 160 pp, 3 maps, 3 figs., 18 tables. ISBN 0 909203 00 8.

Steinalder i atomtiden (Stone age in the atomic era), by Karl Skjerdal. Oslo: J W Cappelens Forlag, 1977. 187 pp.

Indonesia by Donald D Fryer and James C Jackson. Nations of the Modern World, London: Ernest Benn 1977, 313 pp, 1 map, 16 pp of b/w illustrations, index. Hardcover £9.25.