Surveillance (Mock only) Flashcards
Define surveillance.
The monitoring of public behaviour for the purposes of population and crime control.
Foucault (1979) and sovereign power:
- Common pre-19th century
- Control of body
- Deterrent/retribution
- Control is asserted through overt and brutal emotional spectacle, like execution
Foucault (1979) and disciplinary power:
- Common after the 19th century
- Control of body and mind
- Rehabilitative
- Control is subtly asserted through the panopticon
- More efficient ‘technology of the people’
Foucault (1979) and the Panopticon:
Foucault compares disciplinary power to a panopticon: a design of a prison whereby the prisoners are unable to see the guards so live under the constant possibility that they are being monitored - this causes them to monitor themselves, with surveillance becoming self-surveillance.
Foucault (1979) and the ‘dispersal of discipline’:
Since the 19th century, more institutions than prisons have been utilising disciplinary power, such as schools and factories. Other control practices, like community service, form a ‘carceral archipelago’, prison islands where professionals like teachers surveil parts of the population.
Goffman (1982) and control:
Foucault (1979) exaggerates the extent of control of disciplinary power - inmates in prisons and mental hospitals are able to resist control.
Gill and Loveday (2003) and CCTV:
Foucault (1979), a form of digital panopticism, is not entirely effective: few criminals are put off by CCTV. It’s real role may be ideological, falsely reassuring the non-criminal population they are safe.
Koskela (2012) and CCTV:
CCTV is a form of ‘male gaze’: it objectifies women to the voyeur operator whilst not making them any safer.
Give the surveillance theories since Foucault.
- Mathiesen (1997): synoptic surveillance
- Haggerty and Ericson (2000): surveillant assemblages
- Feeley and Simon (1994): actuarial justice and risk management
- Labelling and surveillance
Mathiesen (1997) and synoptic surveillance:
In late modernity, we are in a ‘synopticon’ with everyone surveilling everyone, up-and-down and between us. Mann (2003) calls surveillance from below ‘sousveillance’.
Give a criticism of Mathiesen (1997).
McCahill (2012) argues that occasional bottom-up surveillance is unable to reverse established ‘hierarchies of surveillance’ that give the top greater levels of power.
Haggerty and Ericson (2000) and surveillant assemblages:
As the internet has developed, surveillance has now involved more manipulation of virtual objects (digital data) in cyberspace rather than physical bodies in physical space. Additionally, surveillance technologies are being combined, such as the use of facial recognition in CCTV; they call these ‘surveillant assemblages’
Feeley and Simon (1994) and actuarial justice:
Surveillance now focusses more on predicting and preventing crime, rather than rehabilitating. TSA categorises people based on attributes like age and sex to find their risk factor and search them based on it.
Give a criticism of Feeley and Simon (1994).
Lyon (2008) argues that this ‘social sorting’ places certain groups under ‘categorical suspicion’ (Marx (1988)), where they are placed under suspicion purely for their social group.
Outline labelling and surveillance.
Surveillance Technologies are utilised based on typifications rather than most efficiently: Ditton (1999) finds that CCTVs, which could be used for finding out if car insurance has expired, was not being used and motorists were being left unchecked.
Norris and Armstrong (1999)
Young black males are disproportionately surveilled for the crime of the colour of their skin.
