[ecrea] CFP: Building Resistance Against Racist Digital Futures

*Building Resistance Against Racist Digital Futures *

*A call for interventions*

In the recent years, we have seen a dramatic increase in everyday 
application of digital technologies in the workplace, public services 
and everyday activities. They are presented to us through the lens of 
freedom and positive futurity – a freedom to live a ‘comfortable life’, 
a freedom to ‘work flexibly’; a freedom to receive ‘services’ 
efficiently. A freedom to embrace the digital future. At the same time, 
we are witnessing an unprecedented rise in the use of those very 
technologies as tool of surveillance, censorship, and carceral control, 
serving current regimes of ableism, classism, racism – and particularly 
anti-Blackness and Islamophobia. ‘Big data’ is used for racial 
profiling; biometric scanners are deployed in airports, universities and 
the labour market; algorithmic manipulation and censorship are taking 
place under various ‘anti-terror’ regulations; and social media content 
by activists, migrants and racialised communities is monitored and 
criminalised. These and other forms of technological xeno-racist 
violence cannot be clearly attributed to either state or corporate 
control, but rather, are increasingly about intersections between the 
two. For example, private data firms are contracted by states to carry 
out racial profiling and Islamophobic surveillance; while digital giants 
such as Google or Facebook collaborate with governments to suppress 
anti-war on anti-colonial activism.

This edited collection aims to critically explore and contest this 
intersection of the two phenomena, by deploying a combination of legal, 
activist, and academic perspective on digital violence and digital 
precarity. We aim to counter the uncritical celebration of digital tools 
as unproblematic and default technologies of activism and insurgency. 
Equally, we aim to resist the appropriation of critical digital 
scholarship by governments, militaries and corporations. We ask instead: 
*How can we better understand the constantly emerging new forms of 
digital violence? How can we develop forms of academic, legal and 
community self-defence against them? How do we equip individuals and 
communities, activists, teachers, students and legal workers, with tools 
to understand and resist carceral digital futures?*

While attuned to forms of digital violence and precarity 
internationally, this edited collection focuses specifically on the *UK 
context* and in particular upon PREVENT, Brexit, the anti-immigration 
“hostile environment” and the tightening regimes of policing and 
surveillance of Muslim and Black communities. We invite short 
contributions of up to *3-4,000 words*, in the form of academic or 
personal essays, legal analysis, proposals, manifestos, calls for 
action, or other interventions. Topics may include but are not limited to

  * The intersections between racism, ableism and digital technologies
  * GDPR in the UK
  * Digital policing and surveillance of migrants, refugees, Black,
    Muslim, PoC and other precarious subjects
  * Digital data and racial profiling
  * Social media platforms’ war on political dissent
  * Racial and Islamophobic politics of biometrics
  * The state’s collaboration with digital giants (such as Google,
    Amazon, Facebook)
  * Securitisation and weaponisation of medical records


*Please send abstracts of 300 words and a short bio to 
_digitalprecarity@gmail.com_by 16^th of April 2018.*

**

*Publisher *We are currently exploring publishing venues that are 
non-profit and committed to social justice. We aim to have the print 
book as low price as possible, accompanied by free/pay-as-you-can e-book.

*Editors *

Adi Kuntsman is Senior Lecturer in Information and Communications at 
Manchester Metropolitan University. Adi’s work explored queer and 
migrant on-line communities; regional Internet cultures in the Middle 
East and Eastern and Central Europe; hatred, conflict and memory in 
digital domains; digital emotions; Israeli political violence and 
militarism on social media; and more recently, the use of selfies in 
political actions; and data governance and the politics of ‘opting out’. 
Adi’s latest books include /Digital Militarism: Israel’s Occupation in 
the Social Media Age /(with Rebecca L. Stein) /Selfie Citizenship. /

Sanaz Raji is an independent scholar and activist, campaigning for 
issues relating to neoliberal higher education, anti-racism, migrant 
rights, and the culture of surveillance. Sanaz established the 
Justice4Sanaz campaign three years ago and is the co-founded of Unis 
Resist Border Controls (URBC)  - a campaign designed to end monitoring 
and the hostile environment policy against non-EU and EU migrants 
students and staff. She is a published author and writer in the field of 
Iranian diaspora studies, critical race studies and social media. Her 
work has been featured in /The Guardian/, /Tehran Bureau/PBS/ in 
addition to academic journals and books.

Patrick Williams is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Manchester 
Metropolitan University and co-founder of Site of Resistance 
(www.sitesofresistance.org).  His work is concerned with processes of 
criminalisation; the racialised Othering of minority communities and 
individuals.  In particular, Patrick’s research is focused upon 
challenging invasive social and criminal regulation and the 
(over)policing of minority ethnic communities by revealing concealed and 
hidden strategies of punishment which disproportionately affect black 
communities.  He is the co-author of Dangerous Associations: Joint 
Enterprise, Gangs and Racism for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.


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