| Title | : | The Culture of Surveillance: Watching as a Way of Life |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 074567173X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780745671734 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 172 |
| Publication | : | Published May 29, 2018 |
This important book explores the imaginaries and practices of everyday surveillance. Its main focus is not high-tech, organized surveillance operations but our varied, mundane experiences of surveillance that range from the casual and careless to the focused and intentional. It insists that it is time to stop using Orwellian metaphors and find ones suited to twenty-first-century surveillance ― from 'The Circle' or 'Black Mirror.'
Surveillance culture, David Lyon argues, is not detached from the surveillance state, society and economy. It is informed by them. He reveals how the culture of surveillance may help to domesticate and naturalize surveillance of unwelcome kinds, and considers which kinds of surveillance might be fostered for the common good and human flourishing.
The Culture of Surveillance: Watching as a Way of Life Reviews
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The Culture of Surveillance is a respectable sociological work, which canvasses the post-9/11 North American experience with digital surveillance technologies. The author, David Lyon, is a major academic contributor in the field of surveillance. He is also notable as the Director of the (relatively) new Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University. Right off the bat, then, it seems that Lyon’s name carries a certain amount of clout on the question concerning surveillance technology and culture. The breadth and depth of The Culture of Surveillance illustrates why he is worthy of this reputation.
One of the most attractive things about the social sciences is the penchant for definition, clarity, and consistency. In particular, sociologists almost always try to define their terms at the outset of their analysis, and then apply those terms consistently and repetitively throughout a text. True to this sociological spirit, Lyon introduces a number of key terms early on, and then he spends a good chunk of time fleshing them out in complete detail. His ideas are sophisticated but not overly difficult to grasp, thanks in large measure to this conceptual rigor.
Theoretically, Lyon draws heavily on Zygmunt Bauman’s idea of “liquid modernity”, where he locates a rich conceptual framework for understanding novel, emergent, and ever-changing surveillance technologies. He also looks toward the social idealism of Charles Taylor and, conversely, the social materialism of Michel Foucault, applying their respective “imaginaries” and “practices” to the surveillance question. The result is an interesting fusion of idealism and materialism located within surveillance cultures, which always involves ideas, or “surveillance imaginaries”, and activities, or “surveillance practices”. Other theorists make appearances throughout the text, but it is Bauman, Taylor and Foucault that form the bulk of Lyon’s philosophic vision. As someone who spends much of his life reading Continental philosophy, I enjoyed seeing how this tradition could be used to shed light on a very contemporary set of concerns.
I also appreciate the fact that Lyon extended his discussion of “surveillance imaginaries” into popular culture. Undeniably, the ways that we think about technology are fuelled by our pop-cultural representations, which also function to imagine a future of human limitations and possibilities. However, although he makes an attempt to connect these dots, the chapters covering pop-culture and science-fiction fall flat, as they are too narrow in scope. Instead of discussing science-fiction as a genre more broadly, Lyon focuses instead on one isolated novel/film, The Circle. Unless you have seen the film or read the book upon which it is based, this section will probably be of little relevance. I am not familiar with either, and I saw this as a wasted opportunity to make bigger connections to genre, imaginaries, and conceptual structures.
That critical point aside, The Culture of Surveillance was a highly engaging read. Lyon goes out of his way to offer a balanced assessment of surveillance cultures, which exist somewhere between pain and pleasure, technological coercion and individual autonomy, and corporate manipulation and user submission. Though surveillance technologies are never intrinsically good or evil, he urges us to recognize that they are never neutral either. At the crossroads of these shifting power dynamics, we find a contemporary moment curiously defined by the need to watch and the need to be watched.
Channeling Martin Heidegger, I am tempted to suggest that we have entered a different ontological ‘horizon of being’ in the 21st-century. It’s as if we have transitioned from ‘being online’ to ‘being-online’, where – as Lyon correctly observes – surveillance is not necessarily invasive or peripheral to everyday culture and society, but central and desirable. Surveillance is now a culture in itself – “a whole way of life”, Lyon argues. I tend to agree with him, and I think that this text is a good survey of that very thorny, knotted terrain. -
Thought-provoking and--to lean on a prominent theme in the book--*chilling.*
We are willing and unwilling participants in a surveillance society; when we comply with surveillance in the home and in public, we are unwittingly (or perhaps less so!) complicit in surveillance practices at-large.
