Security and Surveillance in Times of Globalization an Appraisal of Milton Santos Theory (1)

International Journal of E-Planning Research, 2(4), 1-12, October-December 2013 1

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ABSTRACTBrazilian geographer Milton Santos is among the most influential theorists in Brazil and in the rest of Latin America yet his work has not until now been popularized in Anglo-American scholarship. Santos created a solid theoretical framework composed by a set of articulated concepts, some of which are discussed in this paper: technical-scientific and informational milieu, technical unicity, convergence of moments, enlargement of contexts, knowability of the planet, contemporary acceleration, psycho-sphere, techno-sphere and counter-rationalities. This article also presents Santos conception of globalization as fable, perversity and possibility. Through a review of the authors main works, particularly the book Toward an Other Globalization, and through the application of some of his concepts to the analysis of contemporary events, this article intends to offer an introduction to Santos to the Anglo world and to demonstrate how his conceptual framework can contribute to the literature on surveillance and urban security.

Security and Surveillance in Times of Globalization:

An Appraisal of Milton Santos TheoryLucas Melgao, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

Keywords: Globalization, Milton Santos, Security, Surveillance, Technical-Scientific and Informational Milieu

INTRODUCTION

Between April 8 and 13, 2013, two similar academic conferences took place: the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Ge-ographers (AAG) in Los Angeles, US, and the Encounter of Geographers from Latin America (EGAL) in Lima, Peru. Both meetings united around seven thousand scholars interested in geographic studies. I attended the North Ameri-can conference, where I gave a talk about the theories of the Brazilian geographer Milton Santos. Searching through the abstracts for the event I realized that out of the 5411 submitted

articles only two academics, including myself, made any reference to this author. Meanwhile, at the South American event, Milton Santos was not only one of the most quoted authors, but the namesake for a prize awarded to a Latin American scholar making notable con-tributions to the field. How can one explain such a discrepancy? How can one explain why the same author is considered one of the main contemporary theoretical references in social sciences in one portion of the globe, for which he received the prestigious Vautrin Lud International Geography Prize in 1994, and is still largely unknown in another? Part of the

DOI: 10.4018/ijepr.2013100101


2 International Journal of E-Planning Research, 2(4), 1-12, October-December 2013

explanation is that almost none of Santos work has been translated into English. So far only one of his books, The Shared Space: The Two Circuits of the Urban Economy in Underdevel-oped Countries, has been available in English. Originally published in 1975, a translation by Chris Gerry was created in 1979. Since then, however, none of the books produced during Santos most prolific phase have been translated. Recently Tim Clarke and I translated Toward an Other Globalization: From the Single Thought to Universal Conscience, one of his most known and accessible books, and we have been trying to convince English-speaking publishers to print it. Unfortunately, however, there does not seem to be much enthusiasm from the so-called North to learn about genuine theory being produced in the South.

Milton Santos was born in Brotas de Ma-cabas, Bahia, Brazil in 1926. Still young, he moved to Salvador where he pursued his studies. He majored in law, but his passion had always been geography, a subject which he taught for some years as a secondary teacher. In the 1950s, Santos left Brazil to study in France, where he received his PhD in Geography. Upon return-ing to Salvador he soon became a prestigious scholar. During that period he also excelled as a respected journalist and a governmental official. In 1964, Santos was impelled to leave Brazil due to the tense climate that emerged after the military coup dtat. During his exile, he worked in different countries in Europe, America and Africa, which explains the cosmopolitan ap-proach of his theories. In 1977, Santos returned to Brazil and from 1983 until his death he was affiliated with the University of So Paulo. This is when he produced his most important texts. Santos published more than 30 books, some of them translated into Spanish and French. He passed away in 2001 at the age of 75, leaving behind a powerful theory still yet to be largely used, applied and translated.

The objective of this article is, therefore, to bridge this gap by translating and engaging with a selection of concepts and insights from Milton Santos theory. It is important to stress that Santos was not a specialist in security and

surveillance studies; he only mentioned such topics a few times in his lectures and writings, and normally under the generic term violence. It is also equally imprecise to label him as a spe-cialist in globalization, urban studies, economic development or Latin America, although he published considerably on these topics. Santos was in fact a specialist in theory, geographical theory to be more exact. He created a set of articulated, coherent concepts that together form a solid and fruitful body of work.

The theoretical framework created by San-tos has inspired many authors, particularly in the Portuguese and the Spanish speaking scholar-ship. After his death, a series of conferences has been organized, particularly in Brazil, to discuss his work. Books with contributions from authors who use Santos theories have been edited (Brando, 2004; Leite, 2007). Special issues of journals like Scripta Nova (El Ciudadano, la Globalizacin y la Geografa, 2002) have been prepared in tribute to the author. Santos ideas have been used in a wide range of subjects that include economy, politics, cultural studies, transportation, rural and environmental studies, urban and regional planning, among many other subjects. I believe Santos theory can also bring important new insights to the discussion about urban security and surveillance. The facts that many of his writings dealt with the analyses of the techniques1 of information and that he considered Geography as being a philosophy of the techniques (Santos, 2002) support this notion.

In this article I focus on how Santos ideas about globalization and his concept of technical-scientific and information milieu can assist in understanding surveillance and security in the contemporary context. The text begins by pre-senting a periodization suggested by Santos that takes into account the different technical stages of humanity. Then, the concept of technical-scientific and informational milieu is depicted through the presentation of some of its main characteristics. Following that, the concept of technical-scientific and informational milieu is associated with the concept of globalization, the latter of which is described simultaneously



as fable, perversity and possibility. The paper finishes by presenting some new perspectives opened by Milton Santos concepts of counter-rationalities and of the popular period of the history.

A PERIODIZATION OF THE TECHNIQUE

There are many different ways that define the current epoch in which we are living and describe the driving forces behind it: informa-tion age, digital age, globalization, network society (Castells, 1996), postmodernity (Gid-dens, 1990; Harvey, 1989), liquid modernity (Bauman, 2000), risk society (Beck, 1992), surveillance society (Lyon, 2001), and neo-liberalism (Harvey, 2005). In his turn, Santos used the concept of technical-scientific and informational period, which derives from his periodization of the technique. According to Santos (1996), the history of humanity could be roughly divided into three main periods: natural, mechanized technical, and technical-scientific and informational.

During the natural period the relationship between humanity and nature was promoted through the use of simple techniques. There were few existing technical objects such as the sickle, the hoe, and the rake, tools that worked as an extension of the human body. During this period, despite initial attempts to domesticate plants, nature still had a determinant role in social processes.

With the development of more complex machines, the natural period gave way to the technical one. Technical objects started to escape the human body and operated almost in an inde-pendent fashion. In addition, objects began to be organized in systems, something that Santos and Silveira (2001) called engineering systems. However, this transition from one period to the next did not happen in a simultaneous manner in all the various regions of the planet. Because of the lack of communication systems connecting different places, technical innovations could

take several decades to spread throughout the world, making possible the coexistence of two different periods, or to be more exact, two dif-ferent milieus. In fact Milton Santos used both the terms period and milieu, but gave preference to the latter. The author generally used milieu to refer to space, to the way technique is im-bricate with geographic space, while period is related to history, time, and processes. When, for example, the mechanized-technical milieu becomes predominant, it can be said that human-ity is experiencing a mechanized-technical era. This era can be subdivided into shorter periods taking into account, for instance, different indus-trial revolutions. However, for this discussion it is important to highlight the passage from the mechanical-technical period to the current technical-scientific and informational one.

According to Santos (1996), the technical-scientific and informational period appeared after the end of World War II but is only es-tablished worldwide after the 1970s, with the consolidation of already existing communica-tion technologies and networks such as the telephone and television, and the appearance of the Internet. The technical-scientific and infor-mational milieu appears both in the advanced countries and in the more developed regions of the poor countries (Santos, 2000, p. 88)2. In this period, the different parts of the world became much more interconnected and the relationship between humanity and milieu became strongly intermediated by digital information.

Santos suggests a set of concepts to de-scribe the technical-scientific and informational milieu, five of which will be highlighted in the following sections: technical unicity, enlarge-ment of contexts, convergence of moments, knowability of the planet, and contemporary acceleration. These concepts do not appear combined in one single text from Santos, but in a diffuse way in different parts of his writings. In this article they are interpreted and organized in a way that helps the reader to obtain a broader understanding of Santos theory.



TECHNICAL UNICITY

Contrary to what existed in the previous tech-nical periods, there is today an informational technical system that is practically the same for all the countries around the world. The most important symbol of this unicity is the Internet since, for example, an e-mail sent from Brazil can easily be opened on a laptop in France or Japan, or a video recorded in China can be played on any computer in the United States. A similar unicity can be found in other technologies, such as aerial transportation. An airplane that departs from Portugal can land in an airport in Mexico or Australia, since the technical standards are the same. This is different from the past, when, for example, distinct track gauges would restrict some trains to circulate only in a specific network.

Concerning surveillance issues surveil-lance being understood here as any collec-tion and processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for the purposes of influ-encing or managing those whose data have been garnered (Lyon, 2001, p. 2) there are many examples of how technical unicity has facilitated the act of monitoring people. For instance, closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras share almost identical technology regardless of the country in which they are found. Indeed, there is currently a process of normalization of security and of globalization of surveillance, as indicated by Murakami Wood and Webster (2009). Moreover, the worldwide spread of the Internet as the main informational communication network creates the possibility of standardization of several different forms of surveillance. For instance, there is a technical unicity in the control of financial transactions. The same credit card machine is encountered in different parts of the world and, consequently, similar procedures are used to store, control and transfer the information generated in these dealings.

Technical unicity, particularly that pro-moted by the spread of the Internet network, facilitates the sharing of digital data and the in-tegration of different technologies. Santos says:

In our epoch, the arrival of the technique of information through cybernetics, computing, electronics, and so on, is representative of the present technical system. The technique of in-formation will thus permit two important things: firstly, it will allow the various techniques to begin communicating between themselves. This technique assures such an exchange, something that in the past would have been impossible. On the other hand, information has a determinant role in the use of time, permitting everywhere the convergence of moments, assuring the simulta-neity of actions and, consequently, accelerating the historical process. (Santos, 2000, p. 25)

Thus, as Santos pointed out, technical unic-ity creates the necessary conditions for what he called a convergence of moments.

CONVERGENCE OF MOMENTS

The aforementioned technical unicity facilitates the occurrence of a convergence of moments, which according to Santos (2000, p. 27) does not merely mean that clock time is the same in several different places. It is not only this. If the hour is the same, the lived moments also converge. An example that I like to use when teaching Santos theories to my students is that of the Football World Cup, a sport so beloved by Brazilians. When, in 2010, the Dutch player Wesley Sneijder scored the second goal against the Brazilian team in the quarterfinals, I, watch-ing the match on television at home in Paris, swore at exactly the same moment as my family in Brazil and all the Brazilians in the Nelson Mandela Stadium in South Africa. Regardless of the distance and the time zone, it can be said that people in these three different places shared the same moment, experiencing, then, a convergence of moments.

Another, tragic, example highlighting this convergence is the attack on the Twin Towers in September, 2011 (hereafter 9/11) in the United Sates. Many people in different parts of the world simultaneously watched on television the exact moment that the second airplane crashed



into the tower in New York City. Thousands of TV viewers shared that moment of confusion and despair. Moreover, the news of the crash was produced at the very same time the event was taking place. There was no real gap between the production of the news and the occurrence of the fact, as there would have been with important historical events occurring during the mechanized-technical period. The concept of convergence of moments stresses, thus, the ideas of instantaneity and simultaneity in spite of distance.

When thinking about surveillance, conver-gence of moments can be analytically useful for understanding many situations, such as the utilization of CCTV cameras. A police officer in his or her office is now able to identify, on a screen, a crime being committed at the same moment it is happening in another location in the city. Or in the case of unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones (Wall & Monahan, 2011) the moments lived by pilot and target can also converge, a sharing, in this case, that does not imply solidarity, but tension and conflict.

ENLARGEMENT OF CONTEXTS

The combination of technical unicity and con-vergence of moments permits the rise of what Santos (1996) called an enlargement of contexts. The concept makes reference to the current ca-pacity to access and interfere in many different places from just one point. An example from Brazil can elucidate the concept. On February 18, 2001, simultaneous rebellions took place in 29 Brazilian prisons. The action was promoted by an organized criminal group called Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) (First City Com-mand). At noon, leaders of the organization, using mobile phones, gave an order to start the rebellion. The riots were scheduled for a Sunday, a visiting day. The inmates were thus able to take several visitors as hostages in order to protest the transfer of First City Command leaders to maximum-security prisons. The or-ganizations complaints also included abuses of inmates rights, such as perpetual overcrowding.

This event demonstrates that, despite being locked in a prison with restricted movement and communication, inmates were able to act simultaneously. The context of a prison cell was enlarged to that of the country.

Enlargement of contexts is thus directly related to the increase in quantity and quality of exchanges in the current informational period. These exchanges are only possible with the ex-istence of speedy transportation and especially efficient communication networks. Thus, what is occurring in one context can be shared with and expanded to different and distant contexts by the intermediation of networks. The concept of enlargement of contexts is very close, then, to that of convergence of moments, the dif-ference being that the latter stresses the idea of instantaneity while the former that of the importance of networks.

Using the aforementioned case of drones, the concept of enlargement of contexts is ex-emplified when an agent in an office can not only follow in real time what is happening in the battlefield, but can also monitor from a single location several drones in different places. A similar phenomenon occurs in a CCTV control room (Smith, 2004) with the possibility of monitoring different places at the same time, or in a load transportation company in which an agent can simultaneously track the movements of many trucks by use of GPS technologies.

KNOWABILITY OF THE PLANET

These aforementioned technical changes are responsible for the existence of what Santos called the knowability of the planet. This con-cept makes reference to the possibility created by current networks and technical systems of knowing the entirety of the globe. The tra-ditional geographic concept of ecumene, that is, the inhabited parts of the world, does not make much sense anymore. Today, practically the totality of the planet is known and, despite not being inhabited, all the different parts have already been, in one way or another, visited and valued by society. Several different satel-



lites are constantly flying in the Earths orbit and taking pictures of its surface. Every single spot of the planet has thus been photographed several times. Consequently, news like the 2011 discovery of an untouched indigenous tribe in the Amazon will become rarer each day. It can be said, thus, that the entirety of the world has become knowable or, as Santos (2000, p. 21) articulates, for the first time in human history it is possible to verify the existence of an empirical universality.

Moreover, this concept elucidates how almost every important event occurring in public space is noticed. This was already clear immediately following 9/11, when, in addition to the images broadcasted on television, a large number of amateur videos and pictures were produced3. Furthermore, satellite and aerial images show in detail the before-after of the attacked area. Twelve years later, on April 15, 2013, the bomb attack during the Boston marathon demonstrates that this tendency has become a normalized reality. The actions of the two young suspects were recorded by a multiplicity of cameras that included CCTV, digital cameras and mobile phones.

Another way to relate the concept of know-ability of the planet to discussions of surveil-lance is by recognizing the almost impossibility of being invisible in the current period. If Osama Bin Laden were a wanted person in another technical period, he may never have been found. However, Bin Laden was living in a digital age where surveillance and control are facilitated by the spread, to the almost totality of the planet, of informational networks.

CONTEMPORARY ACCELERATION

In the present period, the idea of duration gives way to that of succession. There is a contempo-rary acceleration whereby innovations appear in shorter and shorter intervals of time, leading to a vulgarization of inventions and a perishing of devices (Santos, 1993). Security and sur-veillance technologies are perhaps one of the

sectors in which the concept of contemporary acceleration best applies. Every year the resolu-tion and zoom of cameras are improved, while size and weight are made increasingly smaller. New software appears with the promise of recognizing not only facial features (Introna & Wood, 2004; Introna & Nissenbaum, 2009) but also different patterns of behaviours (Adams & Ferryman, 2013). New technologies like Google Glasses and drones lead to the idea of a blur between reality and science fiction, where the future seems to be closer each day.

It also must be mentioned that in many parts of the world security is becoming increas-ingly privatized and commodified, processes particularly pertinent in the Latin American case (Arteaga, 2009). Consequently, obsoles-cence becomes an imposition. As Kanashiro points out:

The obsolescence system that guides the market plays a role. The most recent products offered in security fairs always show a delay: what one bought last year has already become old. The newer maximum of performance of these surveillance devices, the most modern technology, is always presented by the market, which in turn operates by running toward a supposedly infinite limit, always signaling a gap to be transposed to become modern. (Kanashiro, 2008, p. 283)

The concept of contemporary acceleration can also be used to understand the shortening of the delay between the invention of a new technology and its spread. As an illustration of this process, the dissemination of the Internet was faster than that of the television, which in turn was faster than that of the radio. The same expedited dissemination occurs with technologies of security and surveillance such as cameras, body scanners, metal detectors, alarm systems and so on. Moreover, the concept helps us understand how, particularly with the appearance of contemporary social networks, the delay between the creation of an idea or of news and its spread has become faster than ever.



Today, in a matter of minutes, a video uploaded on YouTube can reach a large number of viewers located in different parts of the world.

Contemporary acceleration also under-pins the shortening of technical periods: the mechanized technical period was shorter than the natural period and longer than the technical-scientific and informational period. This is why Santos (1993) asserts that contemporary acceleration creates a feeling that the present is running away from us.

GLOBALIZATION AS FABLE

According to Milton Santos the technical-scientific-informational milieu is the geo-graphic face of globalization (2000, p. 191). The emergence of new characteristics such as technical unicity, convergence of moments, enlargement of contexts, knowability of the planet and contemporary acceleration create the conditions for the current process of glo-balization. Santos (2000), however, alludes to the complexity of globalization by suggesting that the concept should be seen in three differ-ent ways: as fable (the world as they make us believe), as perversity (the world as it is) and as possibility (the world as it can be: another globalization).

The euphoria associated with the new tech-nical possibilities of the current period led to the appearance of certain myths or fables such as the contraction of time and of space, the global village, the death of the state, or the idea of homogenization of the world. About these types of fantasies, Santos says:

One might use the concept of the global village to convince us that the instantaneous diffusion of news really informs people. Through this myth, and also through the myth that distances have been curtailed something true only for those who can really travel the notion of the contraction of space and time is disseminated. It is as if the world has become within arms reach for everybody. An all-consuming market, said to be global, is presented as if it were capable

of homogenizing the planet when, in reality, local differences are exacerbated. There is a quest for uniformity in the service of hegemonic actors, yet the world is becoming less unified and the dream of a truly universal citizenship is becoming more distant. Meanwhile, the cult of consumerism has been incentivized. (Santos, 2000, pp. 18-19)

Concerning the fable of homogenization, it is important to note that despite the existence of technical unicity, security and surveillance tech-nologies can have distinct meanings depending on where they are installed. Body scanners at American and Saudi Arabian airports can be technically identical, but their social impacts and the resistance to them may be considerably different. The latter country, because of religious guidelines, tends to be more concerned with the utilisation of these technologies on womens bodies, whilst in the former fear of terrorist attacks may make Americans more willing to allow disruptions to their privacy.

Another often repeated fable is that bor-ders are losing their importance. Indeed, they have become more porous to some products. A simple, if not simplistic, way to define glo-balization is through the example of products, such as an airplane, whose components come from different parts of the world: fuselage from Japan, tail from Germany, wings from Canada, and so on. It is true that the quality of the current networks have made integrations and exchanges like these possible. On the other hand, borders are increasingly impermeable to the movement of people; airports are becoming oversaturated with security and surveillance technologies, and illegal migration to some countries is becoming more and more difficult.

GLOBALIZATION AS PERVERSITY

Contrary to the aforementioned optimistic fables often associated with the process of globalization, the current period gives rise to



some problems, which Santos characterizes as perversities:

From whichever angle we choose to analyse the typical situations of the current period, reality can be seen as a fabric of perversities. Starvation is no longer an isolated or occasional fact, but has become a generalized and permanent given. () Two million people live day to day without safe drinking water. Never before in history was there such a large number of displaced people and refugees. The phenomenon of homelessness, no more than a curiosity in the first half of the twentieth century, is today a banality present in every large city of the world. Unemployment has become commonplace. At the same time, it has become more difficult now than before to promote high quality education and even to eliminate illiteracy. (Santos, 2000, pp. 58-59)

According to the author, one of the explana-tions for the existence of all these issues is the fact that globalization is rooted in an ideology of competition. Santos (2000) explained that there is today a surplus value being amassed at a worldwide scale, something he called the single motor. Global companies battle with each other in a ferocious competition. Moreover, the relationship between companies and places becomes unstable since the former can more easily abandon a particular location and move to another that offers better conditions. In addition, the development of communication networks has brought about an exponential speculation, where mere rumours can instantaneously break the economy of a country.

Santos suggests the existence of a tyranny of money which, followed by a tyranny of information, are the two pillars of the present globalized capitalism. Tyranny of information, which he also called violence of information, makes reference to the manipulation and mo-nopoly of information by media companies. Santos says that:

The various national media outlets are becom-ing globalized, not only concerning their an-noyingness and sameness, but also because of the repetition of the same protagonists. Events are falsified since media do not broadcast the fact itself, but an interpretation of it, that is, the news. (Santos, 2000, p. 40)

According to him, manipulated information confuses rather than clarifies. Such information presents itself as ideology. There is a psycho-sphere of ideas and ideologies that appears in combination with what Santos defines as a techno-sphere:

At the same time that a techno-sphere dependent on science and technology is installed, there is the creation of a psycho-sphere, which is equally dependent on science and technology. The techno-sphere adapts itself to the command-ments of production and interchange, thus, often translating distant interests; however, from the moment that it installs itself, replacing the previ-ous natural or technical milieu, it constitutes a local given, adhering to the place as prosthesis. The psycho-sphere, the realm of ideas, believes, passions and locus of production of meaning also contributes to this environment, to this sur-rounding of life, providing rules of rationality or stimulating the imaginary. (Santos, 1996, p. 204, my translation)

It can be said then, through applying Santos concepts, that there is currently a pro-duction of a generalized psycho-sphere of fear that stimulates the spread of a techno-sphere of security (Melgao, 2010). Indeed, today, discourse precedes many human actions, as can be exemplified by the US governments creation and dissemination of a generalized fear of terrorism, particularly during President George W. Bushs tenure, in order to justify law enforcement and an increase in intrusive surveillance procedures.



GLOBALIZATION AS POSSIBILITY

At the same time that the aforementioned char-acteristics of the present period underpin big capital through the production of perversities, these same characteristics can also be put in the service of different social and political purposes. Santos justifies this optimism by explaining:

If we take into account what is presently verified in the empirical field, we can in the first place recognize a certain number of new facts that indicate the emergence of a new history. The first of these facts is this enormous mixture of peoples, races, cultures, and tastes across all continents. In addition to this, and due to the progress of information, there is a mixture of philosophies, regardless of European rational-ism. Another characteristic of our era, indicative of the possibilities of change, is the production of a concentrated population in increasingly small areas, which brings even more dynamism to that mixture between people and philosophies. The masses, to which Ortega y Gasset made refer-ence in the first half of the century (La rebelin de las masas, 1937), gain a new importance due to their exponential concentration and diversification. We are dealing here with the appearance of a true socio-diversity, historically much more significant than bio-diversity itself. In addition to these facts, a popular culture is emerging and exercising a genuine revenge on mass culture. This revenge is achieved by the use of technical media previously utilized exclusively by the promoters of mass culture. (Santos, 2000, pp. 20-21)

Santos made this statement about the use of technical media by mass culture some years before the appearance of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. These networks have facilitated the development of what he previously termed the convergence of moments and enlargement of contexts. Such characteristics are present in the current global wave of protest that encompasses the Arab Spring and the demonstrations motivated by the

rise of transport fares and corruption surround-ing forthcoming sport mega-events in Brazil. In all these cases, social networks played a fundamental role as facilitators of instantaneity and connectivity.

In his theory, Santos had already predicted a bottom-up movement coordinated by the masses and non-hegemonic agents. According to him, the contemporary period has the technological, empirical and theoretical conditions for con-structing a different world. Current processes of globalization are reversible, and a radical transition could occur. The author contends that we are witnessing the emergence of a new period that he terms the popular period of the history (Santos, 2000).

According to Santos, this popular moment is one in which the rationality of the technical-scientific and informational milieu is confronted by counter- and parallel rationalities:

In the sphere of the dominant rationality only a slight margin is left for variety, creativity, and spontaneity. Meanwhile, in the other spheres there is an emergence of counter- and paral-lel rationalities that are frequently labelled irrationalities. These so-called irrationalities are in reality other forms of rationality, which are produced and kept by those from below, especially the poor. (Santos, 2000, pp. 120-121)

The notion of counter- and parallel ratio-nalities is more than an idea of simple resistance. Counter-rationality refers to the subversive use of hegemonic technologies and means by non-hegemonic actors. The idea of counter-rationalities can help elucidate many different situations involving security and surveillance. For example, despite attempts by the Bush ad-ministration to label it as pure irrationality, 9/11 can in fact be interpreted as counter-rationality. The kidnappers of the airplane subverted the primary purpose of that technology and trans-formed it into a weapon. In order to pursue such action, they had to utilize a significant amount of rationality.

Moreover, sousveillance (Mann, 2004), in which those who are normally watched use



similar technologies to watch the watchers, could also be considered as counter-rationalities according to Santos theory. Notable examples include cases of police brutality recorded by civilians bearing mobile phones and portable digital cameras. In Brazil the recent demonstra-tions of 2013 brought to the scene an unpaid group of journalism activists called Mdia NINJA (Ninja Media an acronym that stands for Independent Narratives, Journalism and Action). Through the use of smartphones and social media platforms they managed to cover and publicize, sometimes in live streaming, several cases of police abuse against demon-strators. Such events that would normally be ignored by Brazilian traditional media were now able to reach, in a short lapse of time, a significant number of spectators. Counter-rationalities like these are, thus, beyond simple resistance since they are more than an opposi-tion to a hegemonic rationality. They involve the assimilation by non-hegemonic agents of the characteristics of the technical-scientific and informational milieu.

FINAL REMARKS

Milton Santos passed away in 2001. His last two published books are Toward an Other Globaliza-tion (2000) and O Brasil (2001), which were written immediately prior to paradigm-shifting events such as the 9/11 attacks against the United States and the appearance of Internet social net-works such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These events contributed new elements to the process of globalization and, consequently, influenced security and surveillance in the present period. In many ways, Santos theory offers new tools for our understanding of such phenomena, particularly in his discussions of the characteristics of the current technical-scientific and informational milieu.

Santos theory is quite flexible, in the sense that it is abstract enough to be applied to a variety of themes. As mentioned before, he almost never directly addressed security or

surveillance issues in his writings. However, his understanding of the technical characteristics of the current period can serve as a theoretical background to discussions of these subjects. If information societies are by definition surveil-lance societies as argued by Lyon (2001, p. 28), an understanding of surveillance requires a comprehension of the characteristics of such an information society, or using Santos con-ceptualization, it involves the understanding of the characteristics of the technical-scientific and informational period.

Milton Santos theory is rich and complex. My academic experience has demonstrated to me the delicacy of introducing students to his intricate concepts, since his writings abound in idiosyncrasies and difficulties of interpretation. For those willing to know his ideas better, the book A Natureza do Espao (also translated into Spanish and French) is the most substan-tial of Santos works, but it is not necessarily the best introduction. A full understanding of such a text can only be arrived at through an extensive reading of Santos other books and articles. Of the nearly thirty books produced over Santos career, I consider Toward an Other Globalization to be the most suitable and ac-cessible introduction to his theories, especially for an English audience that, for the time being, is isolated from the other works of his oeuvre. In addition, there exists a documentary based on the central premises of this text, entitled Encounter with Milton Santos, produced by Brazilian filmmaker Silvio Tendler, which is subtitled in English and may resolve any inquiries the book provokes.

Toward an Other Globalization represents an alternative theory of globalization that de-rives not from the perspective of the West, from which this process emerged, but from that of the so-called Third World, which has borne the greatest weight of globalization. In this regard, Santos offers a perspective unavailable to the apologists of Western hegemony, or even to those academics writing against globalization from within the hegemonic spaces of the world.



There is, thus, a lot to be explored within Santos theory. The concepts described in this article are just a small sample of a large set of terms created by the author. Although other authors may have coined concepts similar to technical unicity, convergence of moments, enlargement of contexts, knowability of the planet, contemporary acceleration, psycho-sphere, techno-sphere and counter-rationalities, the original contribution of Santos theory is the strong coherence between these ideas. Santos proposes a solid theoretical framework that can offer insights to scholars interested in understanding the technical characteristics of the present period and the current process of globalization.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express my gratitude to Carolyn Prouse and Jeffrey Monaghan for revising and making significant suggestions to the first ver-sion of this text.

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Lucas Melgao is a post-doctoral fellow in the Faculty of Law and Criminology at the Vrije Uni-versiteit Brussel (VUB). He holds a doctorate degree in human geography in a joint supervision program from the University of Sao Paulo and the University of Paris 1, Panthon-Sorbonne. His PhD dissertation, entitled Securitizing the Urban: From Psycho-sphere of Fear to Techno-sphere of Security, focused on architectural changes that have happened in Brazilian cities due to the fear of violence. His researching and teaching experiences include positions as post-doctoral researcher and visiting professor at the Surveillance Studies Centre at the Department of Sociol-ogy at Queens University, Canada and at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His scientific interests include urban planning and security, surveillance studies, and epistemology of geography. Recently he has also worked in translating and introducing the theories of the Brazilian geographer Milton Santos to the English speaking community.

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ENDNOTES1 Santos approaches the concept of technique

(tcnica, in Portuguese) in an abstract and comprehensive way. This concept, which is central to his theory, goes beyond the idea of technology and is defined by Santos as the main form of relationship between human-ity and milieu. According to the author, the techniques are the ensemble of instrumental and social means by which humanity realizes life, produces, and creates space. (Santos, 1996, p. 25, my translation).

2 All quotes from Santos book Toward an Other Globalization were translated by Tim Clarke and me and will be accessible as soon as the translation of the book is published. However, the pages indicated are those from the original version in Portuguese.

3 Among the many documentaries produced about 9/11, one, 102 Minutes that changed America, produced by Nicole Rittenmeyer and Seth Skundrick, was almost entirely real-ized using raw footage from mostly amateur citizen journalists.

Documents

Security and Surveillance in Times of Globalization an Appraisal of Milton Santos Theory (1)