Challenges to collective action in the post-Snowden era: visions from Latin America

Abstract

This article aims to introduce the contributions to the monograph "The challenges of collective action in the post-Snowden era: readings from Latin America" ​​and is intended to promote further discussion in our social and cultural context. Techno-surveillance is located in the center of a regulatory system of relationships, interactions, and behaviours in contemporary societies. We argue that state institutions, Internet Service Providers, industries of personal data and surveillance, and the media are acting as articulated forces. Technological, financial, narrative, and legal devices are created to legitimate surveillance. The implications are reflected in the production of laws, artifacts, events, discourses, imaginaries, cultural practices, bodies and places for surveillance. Surveillance questions our understanding of privacy, freedom of expression, security, social relations, and the exercise of citizenship. Targeted and mass surveillance shape both public and private spheres. This fact demands a reflection on the possibilities of collective action and resistance. Analytical frameworks are needed to identify the mechanisms and implications of the surveillance society.