Technology, Discipline and Surveillance:  Continuity of Surveillance from Modern  Capitalist State to Postmodern  Neoliberal State

Uğur YAĞAN

Makale detayları

Technology, Discipline and Surveillance: Continuity of Surveillance from Modern Capitalist State to Postmodern Neoliberal State

Yazarlar:

Uğur YAĞAN

Yayıncı:

İmge Kitabevi Yayınları

Dergi:

Culture and Communication 2016 Vol.19(1) Issue 37, pp.207-233

Belge Tipi:

Makale

Yayın Tarihi:

3/2016

Belge Dili:

İngilizce

Document ID (Org No.):

2000514033

Sıklık:

İki Yıllık

eISSN:

2149-9098

pISSN:

1301-7241

Özet:

 

The surveillance of citizens by nation states through information and communication  technologies is widely accepted as inextricable phenomena of modernity. In this  framework, the concepts of discipline, surveillance and technology have had great  importance in critiquing and understanding modernism, particularly in the context of  dissolution of individual freedom. However, from the last quarter of 20th century on, in  parallel with the transformation of communication technologies, nation states began to  lose their monopoly on surveillance technologies which were now also owned by private  companies and ordinary citizens. This advancement in communication technologies  caused a major shift toward the understanding of fundamental concepts like discipline and  surveillance. Today, it is widely argued that discipline is not the main idea behind  surveillance anymore, and state surveillance is not a threat to freedom since neoliberal  states do not have capabilities of centralized surveillance. This approach became quite  popular since many distinguished scholars including Zygmunt Bauman and Manuel  Castells support it. This study aims to explore some problematic aspects of the most  common approaches to surveillance and claims and to argue that even though there have  been important changes in surveillance practices, state surveillance, disciplinary  tendencies and dissolution of freedom are still important threats to individual freedom  within the neoliberal state as they were in the modern capitalist state. For this purpose,  some ideas of Max Weber, Frankfurt School thinkers and Michel Foucault on the  modernist surveillance and discipline have been utilized to show continuities and  totalitarian tendencies of neoliberal surveillance in democratic societies. Theoretical  exploration in this article, supported by documents leaked by Edward Snowden through  Washington Post and The Guardian and some examples of the use of Big Data  technologies by democratic states, has been utilized to show that state surveillance along  with the private surveillance still poses great threat to freedom and it is very unconvincing  to claim that advanced neoliberal societies do not have tendencies toward totalitarianism.

Makale detayları

Technology, Discipline and Surveillance: Continuity of Surveillance from Modern Capitalist State to Postmodern Neoliberal State

Yazarlar: Uğur YAĞAN

Yayıncı: İmge Kitabevi Yayınları

Dergi: Culture and Communication 2016 Vol.19(1) Issue 37, pp.207-233

Belge Tipi: Makale

Yayın Tarihi: 3/2016

Belge Dili: İngilizce

Document ID (Org No.): 2000514033

Sıklık: İki Yıllık

eISSN: 2149-9098

pISSN: 1301-7241

Sayı

Yazarlar:

Uğur YAĞAN

Yayıncı:

İmge Kitabevi Yayınları

Dergi:

Culture and Communication 2016 Vol.19(1) Issue 37, pp.207-233

Belge Tipi:

Makale

Yayın Tarihi:

3/2016

Belge Dili:

İngilizce

Document ID (Org No.):

2000514033

Sıklık:

İki Yıllık

eISSN:

2149-9098

pISSN:

1301-7241