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With Mexico’s War on Crime as the backdrop,
Making
Things Stick offers an innovative analysis of how
surveillance technologies impact governance in the global society.
More than just tools to monitor ordinary people, surveillance
technologies are imagined by government officials as a way to
reform the national state by focusing on the material
things—cellular phones, automobiles, human bodies—that
can enable crime. In describing the challenges that the Mexican
government has encountered in implementing this novel approach to
social control, Keith Guzik presents surveillance technologies
as a sign of state weakness rather than strength and as an
opportunity for civic engagement rather than retreat.