What is it about?
This is a set of two reviews and my response, concerning my book Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the Archive of Romania's Secret Police. The discussion touches on present-day surveillance as well.
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Why is it important?
Surveillance is becoming a ubiquitous feature of our lives. It is useful to understand its previous forms, to help us know better what we are dealing with now in our loss of privacy.
Perspectives
In writing my book I hoped to get behind the secrecy and fear associated with the communist-era secret police. When I received my own surveillance file, covering my over 3 years of research in Romania from 1973-89, I saw an opportunity to learn something about how the secret police work. Secrets and Truths was the result. The two co-authors of this article assess the book's merits and add insights from their own work on security and surveillance.
Professor Katherine Verdery
City University of New York Graduate School and University Center
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Book Reviews, The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, January 2015, Berghahn Journals,
DOI: 10.3167/ca.2015.330110.
You can read the full text:
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