Making Things Stick ─ Surveillance Technologies and Mexico's War on Crime

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s new Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

With Mexico’s War on Crime as the backdrop, Making Things Stick offers an innovative analysis of how surveillance technologies impact governance in the global society. More than tools to monitor ordinary people, surveillance technologies are imagined by government officials as a way to reform the national state by focusing on the material things—cellular phones, automobiles, human bodies—that enable crime. In describing the challenges that the government has encountered in implementing this novel approach to social control, author Keith Guzik presents surveillance technologies as a sign of state weakness rather than strength, and as an opportunity for civic engagement rather than retreat. 

Keith Guzik, PhD, is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Denver. He is the author ofArresting Abuse and the co-editor of The Mangle in Practice.