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

Security and Surveillance

in Times of Globalization:

An Appraisal of Milton Santos Theory

Lucas Melgao, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

ABSTRACT
Brazilian 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 counterrationalities. 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.
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 Geographers (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 American 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 contributions 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
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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 Underdeveloped 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 Macabas, 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 returning 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 approach 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 specialist 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 Santos has inspired many authors, particularly in the
Portuguese and the Spanish speaking scholarship. 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 technicalscientific and information milieu can assist in
understanding surveillance and security in the
contemporary context. The text begins by presenting a periodization suggested by Santos that
takes into account the different technical stages
of humanity. Then, the concept of technicalscientific 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

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International Journal of E-Planning Research, 2(4), 1-12, October-December 2013 3

as fable, perversity and possibility. The paper

finishes by presenting some new perspectives
opened by Milton Santos concepts of counterrationalities 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: information age, digital age, globalization, network
society (Castells, 1996), postmodernity (Giddens, 1990; Harvey, 1989), liquid modernity
(Bauman, 2000), risk society (Beck, 1992),
surveillance society (Lyon, 2001), and neoliberalism (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 independent 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 different 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 imbricate 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 humanity is experiencing a mechanized-technical era.
This era can be subdivided into shorter periods
taking into account, for instance, different industrial 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 technicalscientific and informational period appeared
after the end of World War II but is only established worldwide after the 1970s, with the
consolidation of already existing communication technologies and networks such as the
telephone and television, and the appearance of
the Internet. The technical-scientific and informational 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 describe the technical-scientific and informational
milieu, five of which will be highlighted in the
following sections: technical unicity, enlargement 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.

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

TECHNICAL UNICITY
Contrary to what existed in the previous technical 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 surveillance being understood here as any collection and processing of personal data, whether
identifiable or not, for the purposes of influencing 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 promoted by the spread of the Internet network,
facilitates the sharing of digital data and the integration 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 information 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 simultaneity of actions and, consequently, accelerating
the historical process. (Santos, 2000, p. 25)
Thus, as Santos pointed out, technical unicity 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, watching 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

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International Journal of E-Planning Research, 2(4), 1-12, October-December 2013 5

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, convergence 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 convergence of moments permits the rise of what
Santos (1996) called an enlargement of contexts.
The concept makes reference to the current capacity 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 Command). 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 organizations 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 existence 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 difference 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 exemplified 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 concept makes reference to the possibility created
by current networks and technical systems of
knowing the entirety of the globe. The traditional 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-

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

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 knowability of the planet to discussions of surveillance 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 contemporary 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 surveillance technologies are perhaps one of the

sectors in which the concept of contemporary

acceleration best applies. Every year the resolution 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 increasingly privatized and commodified, processes
particularly pertinent in the Latin American
case (Arteaga, 2009). Consequently, obsolescence 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.

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International Journal of E-Planning Research, 2(4), 1-12, October-December 2013 7

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 underpins the shortening of technical periods: the
mechanized technical period was shorter than
the natural period and longer than the technicalscientific 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 technicalscientific-informational milieu is the geographic 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 globalization. Santos (2000), however, alludes to
the complexity of globalization by suggesting
that the concept should be seen in three different 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 technical 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 technologies 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 borders are losing their importance. Indeed, they
have become more porous to some products.
A simple, if not simplistic, way to define globalization 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

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

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 explanations 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 monopoly of information by media companies.
Santos says that:

The various national media outlets are becoming globalized, not only concerning their annoyingness 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 psychosphere 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 commandments of production and interchange, thus, often
translating distant interests; however, from the
moment that it installs itself, replacing the previous 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 surrounding 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 production 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.

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International Journal of E-Planning Research, 2(4), 1-12, October-December 2013 9

GLOBALIZATION AS
POSSIBILITY
At the same time that the aforementioned characteristics 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 rationalism. 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 reference 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 surrounding 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 constructing 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 technicalscientific 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 parallel 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 rationalities 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 counterrationalities can help elucidate many different
situations involving security and surveillance.
For example, despite attempts by the Bush administration 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 transformed 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

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

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 demonstrations 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 demonstrators. 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. Counterrationalities like these are, thus, beyond simple
resistance since they are more than an opposition 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 Globalization (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 networks 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 surveillance 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 conceptualization, 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 substantial 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 accessible 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 derives 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.

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International Journal of E-Planning Research, 2(4), 1-12, October-December 2013 11

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, psychosphere, 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 version of this text.

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ENDNOTES
1

Santos, M. (2000). Por uma Outra Globalizao:

Do Pensamento nico Conscincia Universal.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Record.
Santos, M. (2002). O Tempo nas Cidades. Cincia e
Cultura, 54(2), 21-22. Retrieved June 24, 2013, from
http://cienciaecultura.bvs.br/scielo.php?pid=S000967252002000200020&script=sci_arttext
Santos, M., & Silveira, M. L. (2001). O Brasil: Territrio e sociedade no incio do sculo XXI. Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil: Record.
Smith, G. (2004). Behind the screens: Examining
constructions of deviance and informal practices
among CCTV control room operators in the UK.
Surveillance & Society, 2(2/3), 376-395. Retrieved
June 24, 2013, from http://www.surveillance-andsociety.org/articles2(2)/screens.pdf

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

Lucas Melgao is a post-doctoral fellow in the Faculty of Law and Criminology at the Vrije Universiteit 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 Sociology 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.
Copyright 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.