Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies

Kirstie Ball, Kevin Haggerty, David Lyon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136711060
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cyber Security
• Index: Computer Science

Surveillance is a central organizing practice. Gathering personal data and processing them in searchable databases drives administrative efficiency but also raises questions about security, governance, civil liberties and privacy. Surveillance is both globalized in cooperative schemes, such as sharing biometric data, and localized in the daily minutiae of social life. This innovative Handbook explores the empirical, theoretical and ethical issues around surveillance and its use in daily life.

With a collection of over forty essays from the leading names in surveillance studies, the Handbook takes a truly multi-disciplinary approach to critically question issues of:

• 
  
  

• surveillance and population control
• policing, intelligence and war
• production and consumption
• new media
• security
• identification
• regulation and resistance.

The Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies is an international, accessible, definitive and comprehensive overview of the rapidly growing multi-disciplinary field of surveillance studies. The Handbook 's direct, authoritative style will appeal to a wide range of scholars and students in the social sciences, arts and humanities.

Part I Understanding surveillance

DOI: 10.4324/9780203814949-2

Introduction

Understanding surveillance

DOI: 10.4324/9780203814949-3

The study of surveillance addresses some of the most significant questions of our day, often dealing with pressing issues of power, culture, identity, inequality, ethics and resistance. The first part of this handbook presents work concerned with some of those foundational themes and how they pertain to the study and operation of surveillance.

The first section focuses on theoretical debates within surveillance studies, with a particular emphasis on the influential argument by philosopher Michel Foucault about the historical rise of a distinctively modern form of “panoptic” surveillance. Following Foucault, this is itself tied to the emergence of disciplinary power that shapes behavior through a subtle form of “soul training.” Many authors have subsequently identified panoptic dynamics in assorted surveillance measures, that throw some light on what is happening within the surveillance “gaze.” But, as other authors show, serious questions remain about the relevance of several aspects of Foucault’s model as it pertains to contemporary surveillance.

Greg Elmer’s chapter addresses this question about the place of panoptic models in the study of surveillance, and the place of Foucault’s work in this field more generally. Elmer concentrates on the three key themes of panopticism, discipline and control to argue for the continuing relevance of Foucault’s work to the study of surveillance. He does so by returning to the works of Jeremy Bentham—the original creator of the panopticon model—in order to make a distinction between understandings of surveillance that focus on the reality of monitoring versus the more Foucauldian emphasis on the likelihood of being watched. Elmer argues that Foucault’s truly unique contribution was to emphasize discipline, which entails a kind of automatic docility and self-government.

Other authors have drawn upon different components of Foucault’s wider body of work to advance our theorizing of surveillance. Here, Ayse Ceyhan’s contribution focuses upon Foucault’s notions of “biopower” and “governmentality,” and how they relate to contemporary forms of algorithmic surveillance which involve a power over life itself. This often relies on population statistics and probability calculations. She demonstrates the relevance of Foucaldian concepts to contemporary issues, showing in particular how such surveillance is now central to neoliberal regimes, used to manage populations and reassure an often anxious public.

The French theoretical tradition contains other rich resources that can usefully advance our theorizing of surveillance. William Bogard outlines some of these works, detailing how insights from philosophers such as Jean Baudrillard and Gilles Deleuze can apply to the study of surveillance. Bogard foregrounds the model of the “surveillant assemblage” which is comprised of heterogeneous component parts which are aligned through processes of disassembling and reassembling. He also accentuates the prominence of a hyper-real form of surveillance that involves complex models of anticipatory simulation.

The second section on “difference, politics, privacy” foregrounds how surveillance, used as a device in governmental practice, can both reproduce and exacerbate different forms of disadvantage.

The state is one of the most established agents of surveillance, deploying an extensive data collection infrastructure to analyze and manage populations. Toni Weller’s chapter places these state functions in a wider historical context, accentuating how processes of rationalization and the rise of bureaucracy fostered state governmental efforts. These were themselves connected to practices of warfare and welfare, as state officials gathered data to protect citizens against external threats, but also to manage populations understood as forms of human resources.

Such monitoring efforts, whether conducted by the state or other agencies, are routinely connected to structures of discrimination, as institutions make decisions about how to deal with different individuals and groups. Hille Koskela draws attention to dynamics pertaining to gender, discrimination and surveillance cameras, accentuating how such devices have often reproduced the gendered gaze, while doing little to rectify the types of harms that women experience. At the same time, however, the introduction of personal webcams has allowed women (primarily) to become involved in projects of selective exposure which complicate existing gendered dynamics of watching and being watched.

Simone Browne builds upon the theme of discriminatory surveillance, focusing on different ways that surveillance is involved in racializing populations. She accentuates historical context, stressing how seemingly disparate technologies of representation are shaded by racial factors. This includes such diverse forms of monitoring as the census, wanted posters and biometrics, all of which have at different times and in different ways been part of racializing projects.

The concept of privacy has had pride of place in attempts to limit the expansion of surveillance and mitigate its more discretionary outcomes.

James Rule notes that privacy is a highly variable concept, one that is used to serve diverse social values and purposes. At its heart, privacy entails an effort to control the flow of information about ourselves in a context of wholesale data collection conducted by large bureaucracies. Since the 1960s an international privacy movement has emerged globally, incorporating privacy regimes that often share key assumptions and principles. In essence, these amount to due process rules for how bureaucracies can and should collect and manage personal information. Such measures are often criticized for being ineffective in constraining the spread of surveillance. For Rule, the major limitation of privacy structures is that they start from an assumption that bureaucratic data collection is a legitimate practice, and as such they provide no guidelines on when surveillance is necessary and when it might be unnecessary or unwarranted.

The final section on “cultures of surveillance” emphasizes the diverse meanings, and representations of, surveillance and how surveillance can be manifest in and also shape different occupational environments.

John McGrath focuses on the day-to-day ways in which citizens have come to produce and use surveillance devices. This is manifest in artworks and cultural products where individuals perform surveillance (and occasionally perform for surveillance). He accentuates how surveillance can be an object of pleasure and fantasy, something that is apparent in the art world but also increasingly in mass culture.

In his contribution Mark Andrejevic concentrates on the role of political economy in the emergence of an advertising-based model of mass entertainment. This has been propounded by an information industry that celebrates interactivity while often cynically exploiting the individual data produced by that interactivity. Such manipulations are particularly important to contemplate as we move to a world of ubiquitous computing where surveillance is built into the environments where people routinely live and where digital enclosures track and collect information on everywhere you go and everything you do online. Andrejevic accentuates some of the more disquieting political implications of a world where corporations have access to a convergence of data that they use to conduct forms of predictive experiments on the public. Introduction: Understanding surveillance

For many individuals their first exposure to the issues raised by surveillance occurs through popular cultural products including television, films, books and music. Dietmar Kammerer’s contribution foregrounds some of the more socially significant aspects of these representations, arguing that these products can help to bridge popular and academic discussions about surveillance. In an increasingly “cinematic culture” part of the appeal of such depictions is that they can more effectively expose people to the emotional worlds of surveillance, allowing them to better see and feel the consequences of mass monitoring.

In a world permeated by surveillance large groups of people are also employed in the routine work of watching others. Gavin Smith’s chapter foregrounds the occupational status of such individuals who are employed, for example, as camera operators. It is an occupational context that is frequently neglected by surveillance scholars who tend to speak in vague unspecified ways about assorted “watchers.” However, the issue of who these people are and where they are situated profoundly influences the operation and functioning of surveillance. Such work is now pervasive both within state bureaucracies but also in the private sector, although it remains little seen and understood by most citizens. As Smith accentuates, however, watching in its various forms can be a trying and ambivalent form of labor. He foregrounds how human subjectivity, including assorted forms of bias, can make watching highly discriminatory. At the same time, staff employed to monitor populations can suffer from feelings of alienation and disempowerment, while also struggling to remain free from monitoring themselves. In the process they can find playful and creative uses of the surveillance devices that they operate.

Section 1.1. Theory I: After Foucault

DOI: 10.4324/9780203814949-4

a. Panopticon—discipline—control

Greg Elmer

DOI: 10.4324/9780203814949-5

Of the three concepts in this chapter’s title—panopticon, discipline and control—only discipline is fully and directly explicated in the work of the late French philosopher Michel Foucault, still the preeminent theoretical figure for surveillance studies scholars. The panopticon, which has overwhelmingly served as a common theoretical and polemical point of departure for surveillance studies, is a derivative concept stemming from the letters and architectural drawing of English social reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748– 1832). And while the concept control is both directly and indirectly addressed in a number of Foucault’s essays and books, its application in surveillance studies has typically emerged from Gilles Deleuze’s (1992) brief essay “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” itself an extension of the philosopher’s book Foucault (1988).

While some surveillance scholars (Haggerty 2006; Murakami Wood 2007) have offered expansive discussions of the limits of Foucault’s panoptic writings, this chapter argues that such critiques tend to attribute the theoretical contributions of such concepts to Michel Foucault alone, negating the interpretive process involved in developing these key concepts. In other words the panopticon has been largely defined by one text (Foucault’s Discipline and Punish 1977), not as an effort by Foucault to critique Bentham, or Deleuze to likewise reassess Foucault. This chapter consequently defines the panopticon, discipline and control as interlocutive concepts in surveillance studies, that is as terms that together inform Foucault’s panoptic surveillance (Bentham’s panopticon), serve as the core political contribution within Foucault’s panoptic writings (discipline) and lastly, offer forward-looking and technologically networked theories of panoptic surveillance (Deleuze’s Societies of Control). Consequently, it is argued that reading across such key concepts may provide new interpretive frameworks for surveillance studies—ones that recognize the inability to surveil and monitor, rethink the nature of subtle yet coercive forms of governmentality, and lastly, begin to theorize future-oriented and probability-based aspects of contemporary panoptic relationships.

Following a historical—or more aptly put, archaeological—order, the chapter begins with a discussion of the panopticon, before turning to the concepts of discipline and lastly, control. There is a logic to this order beyond publishing history. First, as a master signifier of sorts (and notably, the only noun in this grouping of concepts), the panopticon for better or worse continues to serve as a key theoretical frame of surveillance studies. As we shall see, however, for Foucault the panoptic prison first and foremost served to explicate a logic that could be seen at work in the spatial design of a series of key social, medical, educational and psychological institutions. The building blocks of surveillance studies, if we can refer to these central concepts as such, thus begin with Foucault’s interpretation of an architectural plan for a panoptic building. This deconstructive move calls into question the externalization of panoptic gazes at work in surveillance studies and their subsequent assumption of a panoptic theatre that assumes—at all times—a meaningful panoptic object.

The concept discipline as developed by Foucault, in the context of his writings about the panopticon in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, first published in 1975 (1977 in English), amplifies the philosopher’s theory of power, as a bio-political phenomenon, an internalization of power. Curiously the notion of self-governing, or modifying one’s behavior in the face of the panopticon, is perhaps one of the least developed theories in surveillance studies. As such, this section of the chapter emphasizes Foucault’s theory of panoptic subjectivity, the importance of automated forms of political power and his more implicit critique of Bentham’s liberalism. This section subsequently seeks to offer a more explicit discussion of the nature of coercion in the work of Bentham and Foucault, a remedy for the overly individualistic concerns—notably loss of private property—in surveillance studies scholarship.

Moving to the third concept, the chapter argues that control—in particular as articulated in the work of Gilles Deleuze—has tended to lend more weight to networked and immanent forms of surveillance, perspectives that highlight and otherwise question the ever-changing and ever-expanding surveillance systems, mechanisms, protocols, policies, techniques and technologies. This last section of the chapter questions why surveillance studies is far more likely to cite Deleuze’s brief and sketchy postscript, than his preceding book-length manuscript—a work entirely dedicated to the work of Michel Foucault. It is argued that the postscript’s explicit object of study—new technologies—has obscured or displaced the theoretical contributions that Deleuze brings to Foucault’s disciplinary mechanisms, which call into question the immanent process of managing and governing the future.

Recentering the panopticon

While surveillance studies has developed a strong attachment to the panopticon as a guiding theoretical inspiration, the concept’s genesis as both an architectural drawing and a set of letters, as interpreted by Foucault, is largely unexplored (see Murakami Wood 2007 for some exception to this oversight). Studies of Foucaultian panopticism often treat Bentham as an introductory footnote and fail to question how the panopticon has emerged from a decidedly selective translation and interpretation. Oscar Gandy (1993), for instance, in the seminal book The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information, says only that “It is from Foucault that I derive the underlying concept of panopticism … The Panopticon is the name given by Jeremy Bentham to the design for a prison” (my emphasis, 9). To speak of the panopticon, in other words, is to all-too-often reference only Foucault’s words, not the distinct interpretation of Bentham’s panopticon plans and letters. The panopticon was not just a name or title for a building coined by Bentham, it was a sustained political project, and a schematic drawing of a reformist liberalism. It was in other words an expression of a much broader political philosophy, replete with an architectural drawing to explicate its intended effects. The core theoretical and political contributions of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish cannot be grasped without noting the diversions, interpretations, strategic omissions and outright rejection of passages from Bentham’s series of letters on the panopticon from 1787 (see Bentham 1995).

Bentham’s panoptic writings were developed and subsequently published as a series of letters and an architectural drawing of a prison that invoke strong visual imagery of sightlines and architectural viewpoints. They connote a ‘plan in the making,’ a proposal whose components were expressed and shared in specific details, moving the reader through the exact measurements of an entire building. The first set of letters (numbers I-VI) are designed to capture the imagination of the addressee, the last two (letters V and VI) subsequently provide an overarching summary of the panopticon’s architectural advantages. In conjunction with the drawings or plans of the panopticon these introductory letters form the fundamental architectural or diagrammatic components of Foucaultian panopticism—they invoke a plan that embodies a theory of power.

Focusing on these first six letters we can cle...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Preface: “Your Papers please”: personal and professional encounters with surveillance
• Introducing surveillance studies
• Part I Understanding surveillance
• Part II Surveillance as sorting
• Part III Surveillance contexts
• Part IV Limiting surveillance
• Index