Abstract
With the publication of this book we can now drop the modifiers ‘nascent’ and ‘emergent’ when characterizing the field of surveillance studies. As a transdisciplinary intellectual project surveillance studies now has its own journal, conferences, doorstop reader, paradigmatic theoretical tools, symposia in established journals, and a substantial volume of funded research. This volume marks one of the final moments in the process of disciplinary institutionalization and recognition.
As a ‘leading light’ (to continue the visual metaphors) in surveillance studies David Lyon is ideally suited to consolidating the field for the next generation of scholars. In nine chapters divided into three iteratively titled sections (Viewpoints, Vision, Visibility) Lyon has produced a syncretic overview that will be the standard by which subsequent efforts will be judged.
The early chapters address some of the central questions in the field, including ‘what is surveillance?’ It is not an idle question given that surveillance practices run the gamut from interpersonal observation to computerized risk profiling to satellite monitoring. And while surveillance has always been a component of human societies, there is much that is new here. In addressing these diverse practices Lyon's emphasis is on how surveillance has become a dominant organizational practice of late modernity. In different forms and for different purposes, surveillance is now central to such diverse practices as warfare, commerce, governing, policing, gaming and media. Careful not to lapse into reductionism, Lyon suggests that the increased centrality of surveillance in contemporary life can be attributed to the confluence of such things as new technologies, institutional practices, capitalist market forces and governmental logics.
The heterogeneity of such practices also means that it is difficult for any single theory to speak to all surveillance-related developments. While Foucault's metaphor of the panopticon figures prominently, Lyon is uncomfortable with how some analysts have indiscriminately identified panopticism in any and all surveillance practices. He, therefore, teases out some of the other promising theoretical trajectories that can help us understand surveillance – works that range from Weber and Marx to Deleuze and Guattari.
The last third of the book includes a chapter on media and cultural representations of surveillance. It is a welcome addition to the literature given that many of our students’ perceptions of surveillance are structured by Hollywood representations of new technologies of visibility. When approached critically such depictions provide a useful entrée for serious classroom discussions about surveillance practices.
The chapter on ‘struggles over surveillance’ addresses how the concept of resisting surveillance has been understood. It is an important discussion as many graduate students are drawn to this subdiscipline through a passionate normative stance against particular surveillance regimes. They quickly learn, however, that a wholesale condemnation of surveillance is indefensible given that surveillance can be used for both laudable and condemnable purposes. Lyon is intimately attuned to this ‘janus faced’ nature of surveillance, but given his own critical orientation he tends to focus on the more disturbing manifestations and implications. Prominent among these concerns is how surveillance has become part of a wider process of ‘social sorting’ whereby computers are used to automatically and almost instantaneously assign different classes of people to various forms of social processing and entitlements; thereby exacerbating and routinizing forms of marginalization and exclusion.
Non-specialists might be surprised that the discussion on resisting surveillance entirely eschews an analysis of privacy law in favour of an attempt to problematize the concept of privacy itself. This is notable because it accentuates important disciplinary assumptions and cleavages. Lyon's book makes it clear that surveillance studies is a vibrant transdisciplinary endeavour and many of the works he discusses have been produced by scholars working in a plethora of university departments. That said, the comparative neglect of the massive legal industry pertaining to privacy law accentuates the existing academic division of labour where law schools and legal practitioners effectively own the concept of privacy. More importantly, the general lack of attention to privacy law in this volume reflects the orientation of many surveillance scholars who are highly suspicious of the ability of privacy law to stem the expansionist tide of surveillance.
The book is pitched at a level appropriate for senior undergraduate or graduate students. Undergraduates in particular will benefit from the value added materials found at the end of the book, including a list of key terms and five pages of thematically organized suggestions for further reading. More established researchers keen to re-acquaint themselves with the main works in different domains related to the study of surveillance will find that they are repeatedly pulling this book from their shelves.
Because so many contemporary institutional practices increasingly involve surveillance, policy officials and academics in a diverse array of fields will find that they will inevitably be confronted with issues of surveillance and transparency. Those eager to build upon the important existing works in these areas are well advised to start with this excellent volume, lest they risk reinventing the panoptic wheel. Given the speed with which developments in this area are progressing I would expect that Professor Lyon is already working on a second edition.