Surveillance Flashcards
Foucault: Birth of the prison
Foucault’s (1977) discipline and justice contrasts between two different forms of punishment, which he sees as examples of sovereign power and disciplinary power. What are they?
Sovereign = Was typical of the period before the 19th century, when the monarch had power over people and their bodies. Inflicting punishment on the body was the means of asserting control. Punishment was a spectacle such as public execution.
Disciplinary = Becomes dominant from the 19th century onwards. In this form of control a new system of discipline seeks to govern not just the body but the mind or ‘soul’. It does so through surveillance.
Foucault: Birth of the prison
The panopticon
- Foucault highlights this disciplinary power with the panopticon.
- The panopticon was a design for all prisons in which the prison cells are visible to all guards from a central point, but the guards are not visible to the prisoners. Thus, the prisoners don’t know if they are being watched, but they do know that they might be being watched and therefore have to behave at all times. So the surveillance becomes self-surveillance and discipline becomes self-discipline. Instead of being a public spectacle control takes place ‘inside’ the prisoner.
Foucault: Birth of the prison
The dispersal of power
- The prison was the first institution to introduce conformity through self-surveillance but now hospitals, factories, businesses and schools all use it.
- Teachers, social workers and doctors have surveillance over the population.
- Dispersal of discipline - Disciplinary power has now dispersed throughout society, penetrating every social institution and reaching all individuals - surveillance in the panopticon is now a model of how power operates in society as a whole.
Foucault: Birth of the prison
Criticisms of Foucault
- He wrongly assumes that the emotional aspects of punishment disappear in modern society.
- He exaggerates the extent of control. Goffman argues that some people in prison and mental hospitals are able to resist the control.
- CCTV - we are aware of the presence but not sure if they are recording is and this has little or no effect on crime, as people still commit crime in places where there is CCTV
- Feminists - argue that CCTV is an extension of the male gaze (used to control women) - it does not make women feel more secure
Surveillance theories since Foucault
Synoptic Surveillance
- Mathiesen - He argues in late modernity there is an increase in top down centralised surveillance but that there is also surveillance from below - Synopticon - where everyone watches everyone -social media, people watching, video.
- Thompson - argues that powerful groups such as politicians fear the media’s surveillance of them as they may uncover damaging information about them - this acts as a form of social control over their activities - MP expense scandal.
- The public monitor each other- mounted video recorders in cars or on cycle helmets.
- We can also film police wrong doing
Surveillance theories since Foucault
Surveillant assemblages
- Until recently surveillance technologies used to be standalone but now all the different technologies are combined for example CCTV footage can be analysed using facial recognition technology.
- We are moving towards a world of ‘data double’ to control individuals.
(When technologies are combined to control us).
Surveillance theories since Foucault
Actuarial justice and risk management
-These are calculated risks and this derives from the insurance industry.
* According to Feeley and Simon the ‘technology of power’ differs to Foucault’s disciplinary power as it focuses on groups rather than individuals, it is not interested in rehabilitating offenders but simply in preventing them from offending, it uses calculations of risk or actuarial analysis which calculates the statistical risk of particular events happening to particular groups.
* Airport security screening checks are based on known offender risk factors. Using information gathered about passengers (rage, sex, religion, ethnicity), they can be profiled and given a risk score. High scores can be stopped, questioned and searched.
* The aim of surveillance is to predict and prevent future offending.
Surveillance theories since Foucault
Actuarial justice and risk management
(Social sorting and categorical suspicion)
- Lyon - Social sorting categorises people so they can be treated differently according to the level of risk they pose.
- T. Max - categorical suspicion is where people are placed under suspicion of wrongdoing because they are in a particular category or group.
5. A03 - One problem with actuarial justice is the danger of the self-fulfilling prophecy and police prejudice.
Surveillance theories since Foucault
Labelling and surveillance
- Ditton - CCTV operators make discriminatory judgements about who among the thousands of potential ‘suspects’ on their screen they should focus on
- For example there is a massively disproportionate targeting of young black males for no other reason than their membership of that particular social group.
- Such judgements are based on typifications - stereotypical beliefs held by those operating the surveillance system about who are likely offenders.
- This may result in a self fulfilling prophecy for those that are targeted.
- However people can reject the label
