Towards a Critical Theory of Surveillance in Informational Capitalism

Allmer, Thomas

doi:10.3726/978-3-653-01459-4

Cited by 34 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…Fiske (1999) sees panoptic surveillance as "the most efficient form of power, the most totalitarian and the hardest to resist" (218, emphasis added). Thomas Allmer (2012) argues that by the Panopticon, "Foucault understands disciplines as forms of operational power relations and technologies of domination" (18, emphasis added). Those who focus on modern surveillance as a technique of profiling and social sorting also tend to emphasise the coercive or deprivational dimension of the Panopticon, in this case with respect to some specific categories of population as, for example, Gandy maintains in his classic The Panoptic Sort (1993).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surveillance, Panopticism, and Self-Discipline in the Digital Age

Manokha

2018

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The objective of this paper is to revisit the metaphor of the Panopticon, borrowed by Michel Foucault from Jeremy Bentham to describe the development of disciplinary institutions in Western societies from the early nineteenth century, and to examine its relevance for the analysis of modern electronic means of surveillance. Widely used in the early stages of the study of new surveillance technologies, the metaphor of the Panopticon, particularly in the field of 'surveillance studies,' is growingly seen as inadequate to understand the impact of the latest surveillance tools and practices. This paper seeks to show that dominant interpretations of Foucault's use of Panopticon as referring to techniques of domination or to 'power over,' while legitimate as regards some of his earlier writings, overlook Foucault's later works on technologies of the self. That is, in Panoptic dispositifs in particular, as well as in settings involving power/knowledge configurations defining 'normality' more generally, individuals may end up exercising power over themselves without any coercion. It is argued here that the development of modern information and communication technologies may be said to produce a setting, the description of which as 'panoptic' is even more pertinent than was the case with respect to Western societies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Building upon recent empirical works on the 'chilling effect,' particularly in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013, the article discusses modern technologies of the self-self-restraint and self-censorship-that new technologies, enabling different forms of surveillance, produce in Western societies. It also outlines the areas in which the notion of the Panopticon may be useful in terms of guiding research into self-discipline and self-restraint in the context of the proliferation of modern techniques of surveillance.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surveillance, Panopticism, and Self-Discipline in the Digital Age

Manokha

2018

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“…Surveillance is thus a coercive and technological method for controlling and disciplining workers, but it is also a political process of domination, which includes a potential for counter-surveillance through the press. Some scholars have started to apply the stages of Marx's cycle of capital accumulation to the concept and practices of surveillance: applicant surveillance in the stage of capital circulation; workplace, workforce and property surveillance in the stage of capital production; and consumer surveillance and surveillance of competitors in the cycle of circulation (Allmer 2012;Fuchs 2012a). Other scholars, such as Mathiesen, Andrejevic and Ogura, are implicitly or explicitly deploying Marxist concepts such as exploitation, class, fetishism, ideology critique or culture industry in their analysis of surveillance.…”

Section: Surveillance Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bentham, Deleuze and Beyond: An Overview of Surveillance Theories from the Panopticon to Participation

2016

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This paper aims to provide an overview of surveillance theories and concepts that can help to understand and debate surveillance in its many forms. As scholars from an increasingly wide range of disciplines are discussing surveillance, this literature review can offer much-needed common ground for the debate. We structure surveillance theory in three roughly chronological/thematic phases. The first two conceptualise surveillance through comprehensive theoretical frameworks which are elaborated in the third phase. The first phase, featuring Bentham and Foucault, offers architectural theories of surveillance, where surveillance is often physical and spatial, involving centralised mechanisms of watching over subjects. Panoptic structures function as architectures of power, not only directly but also through (self-) disciplining of the watched subjects. The second phase offers infrastructural theories of surveillance, where surveillance is networked and relies primarily on digital rather than physical technologies. It involves distributed forms of watching over people, with increasing distance to the watched and often dealing with data doubles rather than physical persons. Deleuze, Haggerty and Ericson, and Zuboff develop different theoretical frameworks than panopticism to conceptualise the power play involved in networked surveillance. The third phase of scholarship refines, combines or extends the main conceptual frameworks developed earlier. Surveillance theory branches out to conceptualise surveillance through concepts such as dataveillance, access control, social sorting, peer-to-peer surveillance and resistance. With the datafication of society, surveillance combines the physical with the digital, government with corporate surveillance and top-down with self-surveillance.

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“…It has nevertheless been done some research on other forms of surveillance in the workplace, indicating that electronic control of employees may have adverse effects on the right to data protection and may also cause increased levels of stress, discomfort or alienation (see, for instance, Allen et al, 2007;Allmer, 2012;D'Urso, 2006;Hansson & Palm, 2005;Rosengren & Ottosson 2016;Swell et al, 2012;). More generally, the use of field technology may be relevant in light of the current literature on the Internet of things, and how this new infrastructure for data capture and exchange may impact privacy and data protection in the workplace (see, for instance, Weber 2015).…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Visible Employee - Technological Governance and Control of the Mobile Workforce

Tranvik¹,

Bråten²

2017

mrev

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Field technology is electronic systems or equipment designed to capture and communicate data on workers in the field so that employers can manage, document or inspect the behavior and job performance of the mobile workforce. In this article, we argue that the deployment of various types of field technology can be interpreted as the technological realization of popular reform programs that have been introduced in the public and the private sector over the last three decades, especially risk management and New Public Management. Further, we argue that the use of field technology imply that internal systems for governance and control migrate from the corporate to the individual level. We propose that one important effect of this migration is that the privacy (data protection) of the mobile workforce is diminished and that the power of managers is enhanced. Our discussions and conclusions are based on a qualitative study of the effects of various field technologies in 52 private companies and public organizations in Norway.

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Towards a Critical Theory of Surveillance in Informational Capitalism

Cited by 34 publications

References 0 publications

Surveillance, Panopticism, and Self-Discipline in the Digital Age

Surveillance, Panopticism, and Self-Discipline in the Digital Age

Bentham, Deleuze and Beyond: An Overview of Surveillance Theories from the Panopticon to Participation

The Visible Employee - Technological Governance and Control of the Mobile Workforce

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