Surveillance is all around us. Audio and video recording, global positioning systems, sensors, simulations, browser tracking, facial recognition – countless new forms of digital monitoring have been woven into the warp and weft of twenty-first century life. The Anthropology of Surveillance Network, or ANSUR, was formed in early 2021 to acknowledge and understand the crucial place these mediations now occupy in the field of human relationships.Assembling scholars who have studied the phenomenon from the perspectives of the state, of health, of racial criminalization and carcerality, and social welfare, we warmly invite you to attend this virtual roundtable launch of the network, to advance the disciplinary conversation around this subject. The roundtable will be preceded by introductions from the convenors and followed by a Q & A.

While there are many anthropologies of surveillance, we contend that there is not yet an integrated anthropology of surveillance, a deliberate endeavour to understand relationships to monitoring and being monitored as they vary culturally and technologically across the world. It is this comparative analytical endeavour that the network seeks to achieve in the coming years!