The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility (review)
Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: Reviewed by Nils Zurawski University of Hamburg Kevin D. Haggerty and Richard V. Ericson eds., The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006, 384 pp. Over the past few years various edited volumes and books have been published that belong to the wider field of Surveillance Studies. The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility is a further major contribution to this field regarding the quality of the individual articles, the overall thematic range and its contribution to theory in the field itself. It will not be the last book on the subject, but will no doubt stand out as it holds important contributions to some basic theoretical questions by leading scholars in the field that have in the past decade issued groundbreaking works on surveillance. Divided into three parts the collection of 15 articles focuses on the following major issues and themes: the theory of surveillance and visibility; the role of police and military surveillance; and the interplay between surveillance, electronic media and consumer culture. Each of these themes reflects various aspects that impact on current societies not only in the Western world, but which have an effect on life on this planet in general. However, the range of the topics dealt with, generates a problem that is given some consideration by Haggerty and Ericson in their introduction to the collection — namely that of the notion of surveillance itself. They ask if the category of surveillance remains adequate to capture the wide range of technologies and practices that operate in its name (21). The category of surveillance — like all categories — is simplifying, but with the rapid developments in surveillance this analytical term is in danger of becoming stretched beyond recognition. The practices of surveillance have simply become too multifaceted and chaotic that one term alone may not describe all aspects. Surveillance — they continue — is often seen as an instrument of enforced or enhanced conformity. While this holds true for many surveillance measures — especially for panoptic ones — it is not the only aim and use of surveillance. There is a wide gap between panoptic practices, the surveillance undertaken to counter terrorism and practices of watching for scientific purposes (22). Overall they see problems in the analysis of surveillance under these circumstances — namely that different perspectives that may be chosen to circumvent the obvious shortcomings of the term may also risk overlooking other aspects of surveillance, a given practice or process. Without giving a definition of surveillance, which in this light does not seem possible, they conclude that surveillance studies will continue to make generalizations, thereby risking to distort our understanding of surveillance and its attendant politics. However, by reflecting this problem, we become aware of it and may include this in further thinking and writing. The contributions to this collection should also be read bearing this in mind. Part one — Theorizing Surveillance and Visibility — consists of four articles, that are devoted to basic questions and themes emerging in surveillance [End Page 532] studies over the past years. David Lyon offers some theoretical considerations around the core of the term surveillance: watching. In 9/11, Synopticon and -Scopophilia: Watched and Being Watched he explores the different dimensions of watching and being watched in its sociological consequences. He is exploring the forms of watching that exist between the panoptic view (one watches many) and the synoptic gaze (the many watch the few) under the conditions of scopophilia - the love of looking - and in the aftermath of 9/11. Bogard revisits his thesis of the simulation of surveillance in Welcome to the Society of Control. In this he takes his theoretical approach of simulation as a core element of current surveillance a step further - by discussing his earlier work from 1996 in the light of the works of Deleuze/Guattari, Baudrillard and Foucault. His notion of surveillance circles around the control in advance by constructed and produced hyperrealities that replace reality without us knowing it. He enhances those approaches as the scope...
Author: Nils Zurawski
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2015887020