Introduction

This chapter presents the boycotts as crucial moments in the emergence of new forms of active citizenship that respond to new meanings of ''the political'' in the information age. The West German census boycott movements were among the earliest major social movements aimed directly at core features of the ''information age''. The state's policing and surveillance strategies were aimed at rendering these geographies visible. Techniques of ''mass'' surveillance of large demonstrations, marches and occupations of land, as well as new forms of resistance to police measures, became the core issues. Police forces in a number of large cities had, by the 1980s, taken to encircling entire demonstrations, and forcing everyone to remain standing for hours, without access to toilets. The oppositional geographies from the 1960s to the 1980s data sought to capture were multilayered and complex. More broadly, the digital representation of the oppositional ''scene'' had mushroomed well beyond those with direct contacts to imprisoned extremists.