Link to a review and preview of Theorizing surveillance: the panopticon and beyond.
Panopticon.com: online surveillance and the commodification of privacy | Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media | Find Articles at BNET.com
Detailed article about panopticism.
Giddens, A. (1995). Surveillance and the capitalist state. In A contemporary critique of historical materialism, 2nd Edn. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Giddens defines surveillance as two connected processes of accumulation of information and of the supervision of the activities of subordinates in a collective. He believes that information gathering is a prime generator of power.
Human beings are [...]
Notes from:
Elmer, G. (2003). A diagram of panoptic surveillance. New media and society, 5(2), 231-247. Retrieved June 7, 2008, from SAGE Publications database.
Not proof-read, read generously.
The development of a theory of panoptic surveillance is often hampered by an overly literal interpretation of the panopticon.
Criticisms of panopticism are made in three broad categories:
The shifting of architectures [...]
I wrote a very brief post about post-panopticism recently but there’s substantial development of the concept on Beyond Modernity which is well worth a read. These critiques appear not to throw panopticism out but propose a development of the concept that variously recognise the effects of new technology and a more fuzzy/messy understanding of [...]
Further to my earlier, and very brief post about Green’s A plague on the panopticon I’ll add a few more detailed notes here.
Green argues that Foucault’s concept of Panopticism is a defective metaphor that promotes misunderstandings about the way surveillance works in the real world. Green attests: “Despite Foucault’s claims to the contrary, surveillance is [...]
The following are my notes from reading:
Poster, M. (1995). Databases as discourse, or electronic interpellations. In The second media age (pp. 78-94). Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Descartes famously states: “I think therefore I am”. By these few words he articulates a dividual, a binary human-thinking divided within. I am nothing – I don’t exist – without my [...]









