Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence Unit and Religion and Politics Unit

Religion, Violence, and Surveillance
Co-sponsored by Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence Unit and Religion and PoliticsUnit
Religious communities are both targets of and consumers of surveillance. State monitoring of faith groups has a lengthy history, with particular strategies deployed in different periods and unique contexts. Yet academic analysis of religious practice as a site of and for violent or violence-inducing security surveillance remains in its infancy. This panel seeks to encourage discussion about the ways in which religious identity is invoked by socio-political authorities as a justification for its surveilled gaze of "others"; how some members of religious groups or other agents deploy surveillance tactics, like social media "trolling," to advance their own agendas and possibly silence vulnerable members of society; and the complicity of technology companies in engaging in overt and covert surveillance, oftentimes supported by the state apparatus. Ideally, these and other topics will be explored across a range of geographical contexts and faith traditions.