Job/Security A Composite Portrait of the Expanding American Security Industry

by Goodwin, Danny; Schwarzschild, Edward; Poster, Winifred R.; Poster, Winifred R.

• ISBN13: 9780262048699
• ISBN10: 0262048698
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2024-08-13
• Publisher: The MIT Press
• More Book Details

Summary

An illuminating collection of candid interviews and photographs with workers in America’s burgeoning security state.

In a world increasingly under surveillance, this cutting-edge documentary collaboration turns the camera on the ever-expanding American security state. Job/Security bears photographic and narrative witness to the people tasked with safeguarding our modern world. In these uniquely revealing interviews and photographs, authors Danny Goodwin and Edward Schwarzschild assemble a multifaceted portrait of the labor of security. They offer a close-up, in-depth look at what the near-ubiquitous business of monitoring, guarding, and protecting life and property in the United States means for the individuals who do the work, and for the society they ostensibly serve. 

Representing a wide range of perspectives from inside this vast field, Job/Security features men and women who work in homeland security, border patrol, the secret service, and emergency management, among other fields. In candid terms, these enforcers, critics, and targets of security regimes describe their working lives—their jobs, routines, backgrounds, and families—as well as their feelings about what they do. Their stories offer a rare glimpse into the internal complexities of security work and fresh insight into what the encroaching security state is doing to America’s hearts and minds, one worker at a time, and to society at large, on an intimately human scale.

Author Biography

Danny Goodwin is Professor and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University at Albany, SUNY. His photographic, video, and installation work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions and published extensively in the United States and Europe.
Edward Schwarzschild is Professor and Director of Creative Writing in the English Department at the University at Albany, SUNY. He is the author of three works of fiction, In Security, The Family Diamond, and Responsible Men, and his writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Winifred Poster
Introduction: “Beginnings: Security in the Fatherland” by Edward Schwarzschild
Photographer’s Statement of Intent: “Learning to See Security” by Danny Goodwin
1. Homeland Security/Military
Dan Izzo/Retired Navy SEAL Master Chief Petty Officer; Eyal Press/Journalist/Sociologist/ Author; Pablo Arroyo/Former Recon Marine/State Trooper/Bomb Technician; Terri Merz/Senior Research Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; James Vizzard/Retired US Army Colonel
2. Portfolio: Simulations
3. Border Patrol
Adrian Aizpuru/Retired Patrol Agent in Charge/US Border Patrol; Victor Manjarrez/Retired Chief Patrol Agent/US Border Patrol; Francisco Cantú/Author/Professor; Carla Provost/Retired National Chief/US Border Patrol
4. Portfolio: Border Studies
5. CIA/FBI/Secret Service
Jim Steiner/Retired Senior CIA Officer; Diana Bolsinger/CIA/Department of State/US Office of the Director of National Intelligence; Fatema Ahmad/Executive Director/Muslim Justice League; Hasan Elahi/Artist/Dean/College of Fine, Performing and Communications Arts (CFPCA) at Wayne State University; Larry Cunningham/Security Consultant/Retired US Secret Service Agent-in-Charge
6. Portfolio: Constructions
7. Emergency Management
Cyndi Mellen/Continuity of Operations Director at New York City Emergency Management; DeeDee Bennett Gayle/Associate Professor/College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity (CEHC)/University at Albany, SUNY; John Delaney/High Threat Program Manager at Arlington County Fire Department; Chauncia Willis/Disaster equity expert/Author/Emergency manager and co-founder of the Institute for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Management (I-DIEM)
Afterword by Winifred Poster
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Figure List