Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Course Outlines

Spring 2023 - IS 365 D100

Surveillance Capitalism in Global Context (4)

Class Number: 7743

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Jan 4 – Apr 11, 2023: Fri, 9:30 a.m.–12:20 p.m.
    Vancouver

  • Prerequisites:

    45 units.

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Explores how digital technology is transforming societies, political systems, and economies around the world. Examines the origins of surveillance and data assessment and the political, economic, and ethical challenges automated technologies present by focusing on contemporary cases and their effects in communities around the world. Students with credit for IS 319 under this topic may not take this course for further credit.

COURSE DETAILS:

As many as three billion people around the world now use smart phones. In many parts of the world, social media apps have become the dominant way that people produce and consume knowledge. These AI-assisted communication tools, from smart speakers to diet apps, feed on human experience. They become tracking devices (!) that claim our everyday behaviour as surplus data that can be turned into prediction products. These products are in turn sold to advertisers or, in some cases, policing agencies in order to predict and shape the behavior of targeted populations. This new frontier in capital accumulation, what Shoshana Zuboff names “surveillance capitalism,” is producing a new political and economic relation to human experience. Because of its interlinkages between global fields of power projected by states such as the United States and China, and private-public transnational corporations, such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Alibaba, Huawei and Hikvision, this new economic and political formation demands a response from social scientists who are deeply embedded in communities around the world.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

This course will examine the emergence of surveillance capitalism from a number of vantage points. How did this new form of digital capitalism first emerge in North America? How is digital technology reshaping social life in places such as China, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Palestine, Russia, Ethiopia, Brazil and elsewhere? What is the role of counter-insurgency theory, authoritarian politics, and geopolitics in guiding the values of these systems? In what ways is surveillance capitalism connected to other economic formations such as disaster capitalism, racial capitalism and managerial capitalism? How can this system be hacked and transformed by democratic movements?

Grading

  • Weekly Reading Responses 30%
  • Participation 10%
  • Case Study Essay 20%
  • Final Essay 40%

NOTES:

Graduate students who would like to take the course for graduate credit should contact the instructor and enroll in an IS 820 Directed Readings course. In order to receive graduate credit, students will be required to attend and participate in the regular 300 level class that will meet each Friday at 9:30 am -12:20 pm at the Harbour Centre downtown. In addition, graduate students will be required do some extra readings and assignments and meet with me and the other grad students in my office hours for more discussion about the class. We will decide together exactly which other readings we will read (based on a list of readings I will provide and graduate student suggestions) and when we will meet.

Students will be required to submit their written assignments to Turnitin.com in order to receive credit for the assignments and for the course.

The School for International Studies strictly enforces the University's policies regarding plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty. Information about these policies can be found at: http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/teaching.html.

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

Required readings will be available on Canvas, online, or in the SFU Library’s electronic collection.

REQUIRED READING NOTES:

Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.

Registrar Notes:

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS

SFU’s Academic Integrity website http://www.sfu.ca/students/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating. Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.

Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the university community. Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the university. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the university. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html