Hi-Tech Gemeinschaft: Digital Self-Patrolling and Social Control in Rural Colombia

• In Event: 1249 - Global Communities

Abstract

How do rural residents use digital technologies to exert social control, specifically against crime? To answer this question, I use physical and digital participant observation in an urbanizing town in rural Colombia to study the case of digital securitization and social control in the countryside. Despite of images of the rural idyllic, these areas have seen an increase in crime in recent years and residents are using digital technologies against it. Although not exactly digital vigilantism, I find that rural residents engage in a type of sousveillance to patrol common roads and neighbors’ houses using social media and other smartphone apps. This proactive stance against crime, seen as a constant neighbor surveillance, can result in successful prevention of burglaries and cattle theft, but also in a stronger social control that creates conflicts among neighbors. By exploring these mechanisms to exert control and prevention, this study illustrates the ways in which “urban” practices seep into rural spaces that until recently did not have the infrastructure to support them, as well as the effects of using such digital media in everyday life interactions and practices amongst rural residents.

Author

• Sebastian Villamizar-Santamaria, The Graduate Center, CUNY