surveillance

The crucial role of cyberspace attracted the special attention of the governments in different countries, which consider it both as a challenge and an opportunity. One of the key policies and preventive measures adopted concerning the challenges posed by the cyberspace is it regulation. In fact, there are only a few states have not taken any steps in regulating their cyberspace. This paper seeks to demonstrate a set of policy proposals for the Islamic Republic of Iran through the study of three leading but different precedents in regulating the cyberspace, including the United States, the European Union, and China. This study employs a descriptive-analytical model, which recommends placing the main investment in and concentration on the final user, employing economic strategies, special attention to governmental and public institutions, prioritizing content removal over blocking, negotiating an agreement with foreign service providers, drafting a content rating system, and using international capacities for cooperation. Accordingly, the final policy proposals for the Islamic Republic of Iran would be decentralization, user-oriented decisions, prioritizing removal over blocking, and monitoring over filtering.

Some of Donald Barthelme’s works have been undeniably influenced by Michel Foucault’s socio-political philosophy, however, few scholars have explored such concepts in his works, especially the theme of “panopticism.” The purpose of this article, which is library based, is to analyze and scrutinize the panoptic society of Barthelme’s “Subpoena” in the light of Foucauldian “panopticism” which is a segment of his more general concept of power. Keeping the Benthamite “Panopticon” in the back of his mind, Foucault outlines the “new physics of power” represented by “panopticism” as a modern or disciplinary power; he, then, draws our attention to its most important feature, i.e., the penetration into the most trivial and personal affairs of social subjects. It is worth mentioning that the basic characteristics of disciplinary power such as omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence can be discovered in panoptic society of “Subpoena.” In this society, there is always the possibility of resistance and rebellion because wherever power is found, resistance emerges as well, though, eventually, power prevails upon individuals. Barthelme creatively portrays a post-modern society in which disciplinary power, with its meticulous and permanent surveillance, on the one hand, has transformed the subjects into the men of modern humanism, and, on the other hand, has changed the traditional society into a panoptic one. Barthelme successfully finalizes the story with the message that modern society intends to make obedient and useful machines out of the subjects.

Security is one of the most critical factors affecting the quality of urban spaces. Nowadays, most of these spaces have become merely pathways with neither social life nor sense of belonging to it. Insufficiency of public surveillance along with weak sense of control and surveillance results in spaces with high crime rate. In the late 60s and early 70s, high crime statistics in open urban spaces around America and Europe, forced many city planners to provide physical and cultural solutions for it. Sensitive environmental design can simultaneously prevent the occurrence of crime and increase the control and surveillance over the public spaces. The main purpose of this paper is to achieve the most critical factors enhancing safe urban spaces. The research method is descriptive analysis and is done by comparative study on three outstanding theorists’ point of view toward the subject. Research findings identify that crime prevention is largely achieved through applying territoriality, surveillance and social interaction factors in environmental design.

This study attempts to examine Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in the light of the ideas of Michel Foucault, specifically the notions of normalization, institutions, and surveillance that tackle the relationships among power, institutions, and literature. The analysis posits that, in the context of the 1960s, the American government took advantage of all the institutions which were supposed to guarantee the freedom of individuals to curtail their freedom. Seeking to create a normal, ordinary, and homogeneous society, these administrations have employed the police, law, prison, and other overlapping institutions that work in tandem to create circuits of institutions which guarantee to reduce  human beings to simpletons who are docile, meek, and ready to fit in place properly. The normality and ordinariness favored by the authorities are also implemented since the novel starts by depicting free individuals whose identities hinge on their being abnormal while it ends when their movement is shattered, and the protagonist is seen as a simpleton serving the forced labor sentence of the judges of both the government and normality. Freedom emerges as a mirage than truth as there seems to be no outside through which individuals can live outside the domination of controlling apparatuses.