معرفی
Benjamin H. Snyder serves as Associate Professor of Sociology at Williams College, where he conducts research at the intersection of surveillance technology, policing practices, and the sociology of work and time. His academic profile is defined by two major research trajectories that increasingly converge: the sociology of time in contemporary workplaces and the implementation of surveillance technologies in urban policing contexts.
Snyder's research interests span surveillance technology, urban policing, sociology of work, time studies, and law enforcement ethics. His work examines how technological innovations reshape social structures, particularly through ethnographic studies of aerial surveillance programs in Baltimore as documented in his 2024 book Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore's Surveillance Experiment. He also investigates temporal dimensions of contemporary capitalism, exploring how time is experienced, managed, and contested in flexible work environments. His scholarship challenges simplistic narratives about technology as either utopian solution or dystopian threat, instead providing nuanced accounts of how technologies function in real-world contexts with their technical limitations and social implications.
Snyder's publication record reveals an evolution from earlier work on time management in knowledge work and flexible capitalism toward more recent focus on surveillance technologies and policing practices. His methodological approach combines direct ethnographic observation with sociological analysis, allowing him to document both capabilities and limitations of systems like Baltimore's aerial surveillance program. This empirical grounding provides valuable insights for policy discussions about appropriate boundaries of surveillance technologies in democratic societies.
As an academic mentor, Snyder guides students interested in sociological research methods, urban sociology, and the social implications of technology. His teaching likely reflects his research interests, providing critical perspectives on technology and society while emphasizing the importance of understanding how people actually interact with and make sense of technological systems in their daily lives.
