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About Scott Timcke

My name is Scott Timcke. I am a comparative historical sociologist interested in the study of race, class, technology and inequality. My approach to these topics is greatly shaped by South African and Caribbean critiques of the Anglo-American liberal tradition. Presently I am working on a series of projects broadly aimed at re-theorizing what sufficient democratic infrastructure looks like through bringing Southern materialist perspectives to bare upon issues greatly shaped by modernity.
  • Here is my CV.
Most of my work involves archival methods, historiography, and econometrics. I ran a two year multi-site ethnography from 2006-2008, and conducted a national survey in 2019. I also have a growing interest in how computational social science methods can be used to help inquiries in political economy.

 In 2017, University of Westminster Press published my book Capital, State, Empire. I used Black Radicalism to analyze the American security state’s historical impulse to weaponize communication technologies, I argued that ‘digital coercion’ is organized by a security state managing an oppressive labour regime. This regime has long institutional antecedents in genocide, slavery, and dispossession, but now adds mechanisms like computationally aided global dragnet surveillance, drone and cyber-warfare, and protracted conflicts abroad. One can see these securitization dynamics inside the United States as well, for instance in the militarized policing of the most vulnerable, data-profiling, and automated attempts to subvert dissent. New computational techniques of ideological manipulation are currently being developed to mystify these dynamics.

 I talk about some of my work on The Intersection of Things podcast. You can find a sense of my research in the teaching tab where you can find my syllabi and slides.

 Recently I held a tenure-track post at The University of The West Indies. I have a PhD in Communications from Simon Fraser University, and MA & BA(Hons) in Political Studies from The University of The Witwatersrand.

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