AHSS*1090 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Sonia Sotomayor, Countersurveillance, Data Mining
Communication, Technology & Culture
Week 10: Surveillance and Technology
What is Surveillance?
-Is watching over, supervision for purpose of direction and control
-According to David Lyon, “focused, systematic, and routine attention to personal
details for the purpose of influence, management, protection or direction.”
-Surveillance is implicated in the process of social ordering or assigning groups
and individuals into a hierarchy of social relations
-Possesses power
-Tries to keep things the way they are
-Methods: (1) Face to face (2) File based (3) Interface
-Motivations: (1) Capitalism (2) Rationalization (3) Power
-Used to deter crime, manage risks, reduce harms
-Can amplify risks and social divisions
-Can infringe on our liberties
-Not a neutral exercise
-Operates under the assumption that it is necessary to generate categories of
suspicion or deviation to uphold prescribed social norms
Panoptic Societies
-Lyon argues the rise of surveill. may be traced to modernity’s impetus to co-
ordinate or control
-Begins with nation-state and bureaucracy that developsModern surveillance
develops alongside rise of criminal, moral and legal discourses that consolidate
within bureaucratic procedures of 19th century
-Punishment changes from spectacle towards producing obedient and docile
individuals
-Carceral punishment – constant surveillance of inmates under disciplinary power
-New prisons develop form of spatial and temporal control via hierarchies of
surveillance and classification
-Panoptic principle – the few exercise surveillance over the many
-Creation of a disciplinary society
Dispersal Of Disciplinary Surveillance
-Neighbourhood watch, private security, closed circuit cameras
-Move to informal, private and communal controls widens net of formal system
-Blurs ‘old’ boundaries between formal/informal and public/private forms of control
-Fundamental principle of surveillance remains the same - classification
Electronic Panopticon
-Electronic and digital technology allow for an even greater possibility for
surveillance
-Surveillance becomes mediated
-Because of computers and databases, subject of surveillance is multiplied and
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Document Summary
Is watching over, supervision for purpose of direction and control. According to david lyon, focused, systematic, and routine attention to personal details for the purpose of influence, management, protection or direction. Surveillance is implicated in the process of social ordering or assigning groups and individuals into a hierarchy of social relations. Tries to keep things the way they are. Methods: (1) face to face (2) file based (3) interface. Motivations: (1) capitalism (2) rationalization (3) power. Used to deter crime, manage risks, reduce harms. Operates under the assumption that it is necessary to generate categories of suspicion or deviation to uphold prescribed social norms. Lyon argues the rise of surveill. may be traced to modernity"s impetus to co- ordinate or control. Begins with nation-state and bureaucracy that developsmodern surveillance develops alongside rise of criminal, moral and legal discourses that consolidate within bureaucratic procedures of 19th century. Punishment changes from spectacle towards producing obedient and docile individuals.
