Surveillant assemblage: Overt, covert, movement and social surveillance in domestic and family violence in Singapore

• Published in: Women's studies international forum Vol. 96; p. 102664
• Main Author: Vitis, Laura
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.01.2023
• Subjects: Coercive control; Domestic violence; Family violence; Surveillance; Technology facilitated coercive control; Technology facilitated violence against women; Domestic violence; Technology facilitated violence against women; Coercive control; Surveillance; Technology facilitated coercive control; Family violence
• ISSN: 0277-5395; 1879-243X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.wsif.2022.102664

This paper explores the role of surveillance technologies in domestic and family violence in Singapore. To do so, it outlines findings from a pilot research project which focused on technology and violence against women in Singapore and involved fourteen semi-structured interviews with frontline workers in the fields of domestic and family violence, sexual violence and LGBT support. Drawing from Dragiewicz et al.'s (2018) work on technology facilitated coercive control, this paper outlines how overt, covert, social and movement surveillance via digital, internet and communication technologies was used to control and constrain survivors. This article explores how the dynamics of domestic and family violence shaped the use of the surveillance technologies reported in these accounts. It also argues that wider gendered, global and local surveillance cultures generated important permissions which legitimated surveillance as a technology of control and reproduced women and girls as normalised surveillance subjects.