Credit

3.00   (L-T-P:   3-0-0)

Department / Center / School / Unit

Policy

Course Objectives

This course will explore the manner in which technology frames law’s possible impact on citizenship in the twenty- first century. It will explore four identified themes central to understand how the intersection of law and technology affects the framing, recognition and enjoyment of constitutional rights by citizens.

Course Contents

Although there has been considerable focus in political theory and legal studies on the concept of citizenship, and its relationship with the law, through the last six decades, the study of the importance of technology to this relationship is only an emerging field. Four performative sites of citizenship discourse/citizen action viz., (a) human rights approaches and the regulation of technology, (b) Surveillance state and citizenship, (c) Technological ethics as a site for citizenship discourse, and d) Posthuman citizen, are focused upon to offer possible (conceptual and practical) implications for the ways in which ‘law and technology’ impacts existing rights discourse. Further, four important sites of contemporary debates on technology and citizenship, viz., UID/Aadhaar, Human DNA profiling for crime control, nuclear technology and genetically modified technologies in agriculture are focussed on to contextualise the key issues that are identified in the earlier modules.