Peter Shields

Integration, the Indian state and STAR TV: Policy and theory issues

Since the advent of STAR TV, television programming in India has transformed significantly. Television is no longer under strict government control. What are the implications for the governments national integration project? Will it strengthen or weaken the govern ments capacity for social control? Will it undermine the governments elaboration of a national identity? The paper addresses these questions. We begin by identifying the social forces that have shaped the turbulent career of the national integration project. The role of the changing television environment is then examined in relation to these forces. The analysis suggests that it is the growing unrest within civil society which poses the real danger to this integration project - not transborder satellite channels. It is argued that democracy can be furthered only by welding together disparate groups in civil society into a bloc that can force concessions from governing elites. Media scholars need to ask how media can play a role in this task.

Borders as information flows and transnational networks

The international communication subfield has assumed that cross-border information flows and the national borders they traverse are two different kinds of phenomena: information flows are viewed as fluid and mobile, while national borders are understood to be the rigid and immobile edges of the nation-state ‘container’. This paper unsettles this assumption by showing that state actors in the US and the EU are stretching border controls into neighbouring and distant territories. These borders, which are dependent on transnational ICT networks, are permitting state actors to re-scale border controls in a way that transcends the territorial framework of the nation-state system. These network-like borders are discussed in terms of their contribution to mobility inequality; their implications for those who have turned to concepts such as ‘diaspora’ as a way of escaping ‘the iron grip of the nation-state on the social imagination’; and their implications for state power.

Electronic Networks, Enhanced State Surveillance and the Ironies of Control

The article begins by mapping the worldwide surge of state network surveillance initiatives that has occurred over the last decade or so. Invariably, the rationale for these initiatives include the claim that they will curb crime and/or terrorism. Focusing on the US context, it is argued that the proliferation of state network surveillance initiatives has resulted in a substantial increase in state surveillance power. Dated legal concepts have been applied without discrimination to contemporary electronic networks. The upshot is that increasingly sensitive ‘traffic data’ can be accessed easily by law enforcement. This enhanced network surveillance capacity has failed to deter drug trafficking and money laundering – intertwined crimes that have been of high priority to US state officials. In fact, not only have these initiatives failed to curb these crimes, they have contributed to their escalation. It is argued that a similar dynamic may be at work in the US states ‘war on terrorism’. Policy implications of the analysis are briefly discussed.

Finance warfare, surveillance and collateral damage

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, finance warfare emerged as a major instrument in the Bush administration’s anti-terrorist strategy. Identifying money as the “lifeblood of terrorist operations,” President Bush declared that “we will starve the terrorists of funding, turn them against each other ... and bring them to justice.” He announced the creation of an “international financial equivalent of law enforcement’s ‘Most Wanted’ list.” Banks and other financial institutions around the world were put on notice: “If you do business with terrorists ... you will not do business with the United States.” Shortly after, the U.S. government along with European Union countries began freezing the financial assets of myriad organizations and individuals deemed terrorists. Various charitable organizations believed to have links with terrorists have been shut down. This high-profile campaign has served the expedient purpose of demonstrating resolve and commitment to a public that expects swift action. Moreover, it is an approach that was likely to court little controversy. After all, for two decades the follow-the-money strategy has been accepted nationally and globally as a key weapon in the U.S.-led “war on drugs.” Indeed, the Bush administration’s financial offensive builds on the plethora of national and international antimoney-laundering initiatives that have been crafted to eliminate the flow of illicit drugs and other forms of transnational crime. But beyond its symbolic value, will the Bush administration’s finance warfare really stanch the flow of funds to terrorists, thereby curbing the terrorist threat and enhancing public safety? While it is still too early to trace the full effects of the administration’s strategy, a consideration of how the follow-the-money approach has fared in the war on drugs does suggest some answers.

Surveillance, Information Technology, and Reconfiguring Borders

In the 1990s, it was commonplace to claim that the forces of globalization were rapidly eroding the capacity of states to control their increasingly sieve-like borders. Claims of an emerging borderless world now seem quaint given the dramatic post-9/11 surge in the securitization of many borders around the world. As one commentator puts it, ‘‘in both political debates and policy practice, borders are very much back in style.’’

Beyond “loss‐of‐control”: telecommunications, surveillance, drugs and terrorism

In the US (and elsewhere), law enforcement agencies take the position that new telecommunications technologies are eroding their abilities to intercept and monitor electronic communications. They argue that they are “losing control”. Without new telecommunications surveillance powers, the argument runs, drug traffickers and terrorists will be able to operate with impunity within virtual sanctuaries. The problem with this narrative is that it functions to deflect attention from the fact that the US State has contributed significantly to some of the very problems that that have generated the calls for new surveillance powers. An alternative narrative sketched. It is argued that the escalation of the US State’s failed War on Drugs has been a key factor behind the proliferation of the recent surveillance initiatives. It is suggested that a similar dynamic may be operating in the US State’s New War on Terrorism.

State, national identity and media

The struggle among media corporations for power and profit is being waged on a planetary scale. A relatively small number of transnational giants (e.g., Sony, Time Warner, Walt Disney, and Rupert Murdochs News Corporation) maneuver to deliver endless audio‐visual products across new swaths of geographic and social space. This has resulted largely from the development of new delivery systems such as communication satellites, and from a global policy shift to reduce the states role and hand things over to private enterprise. Both have rendered the boundaries of the nation‐state increasingly porous.

The Human Cost of the European Union's External Border Regime

Contemporary globalization is often portrayed in terms of juggernaut-like flows of money, information, goods, and people hurtling through global space and across increasingly anemic borders, melting away the last remnants of state sovereignty and control in the process. In this imaginary, the focus is on the speed, circulation, density, and pattern of flows connecting distant peoples and places and on the revolutionary changes in communication and transportation technologies that enable these supra-national “mobilities.” Yet this sweeping imagery of a “world in motion” must be balanced by attention to the fact that globalization is also marked by the proliferation of walls, barriers, and membranes designed to obstruct and/or filter out particular bodies, goods, and information deemed unacceptable.