This seminar explores in empirical detail the air-bound expectations, imaginations and practices arising from the acquisition of a new police drone in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. It shows how drones are transforming the ways in which the aerial realm is lived as a context, object and perspective of policing.
This tripartite structure is taken as a prism through which to advance novel understandings of the simultaneously elemental and affective, sensory, cognitive and practical dimensions of the aerial volumes within, on and through which drones act. The study of the ways in which these differing dimensions are bound together in how the police think about drones and what they do with them enables the development of an ‘aerial geopolitics of security’ that, from a security viewpoint, approaches interactions between power and space in a three-dimensional and cross-ontological way.
About Francisco Klauser
Francisco Klauser is professor in political geography at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. His work explores the socio-spatial implications, power and surveillance issues arising from the digitisation of present-day life, thus bridging the fields of human geography, surveillance studies and risk research. Main research topics include video surveillance, mega-event security, smart cities, airport surveillance, civil drones, and big data in agriculture.
The seminar will not be recorded.