Introducing surveillance studies

Surveillance studies is new. That is to say, until very recently something called surveillance studies did not exist. People studied surveillance, but in isolated, piecemeal and unsystematic ways. Over the past 20 years or so, surveillance has become an increasingly important topic within both academic and public debate. Interest in surveillance studies has mushroomed, generating considerable excitement about the potential for new ways to understand human behavior. The appearance of this handbook indicates that the field has matured sufficiently for many scholars to cooperate on a joint publishing venture to map the field in at least a preliminary fashion. It does not for a moment mean that “schools�? of thought have emerged in any broadly agreed upon, well de�?ned way, or that the field has stabilized into secure and preset lines of argument. It does mean that there are some tremendously important issues to analyze and to debate that a lively community of scholars are pursuing.