Everyday Surveillance: Vigilance and Visibility in Postmodern Life - Softcover

William G. Staples

3.52

23 ratings by Goodreads

9780742500785: Everyday Surveillance: Vigilance and Visibility in Postmodern Life

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0742500780 ISBN 13: 9780742500785

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000

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This book highlights 'mundane' practices that increasingly influence our schools, homes and communities; cameras, Opagers', electronic monitoring instruments, the digital Opaper trailO of OcashlessO transactions, random drug testing, and Ointegrity testsO. The author journeys back and forth between the justice system and the everyday life of the postmodern to illustrate how the lines between these two spheres of social life are increasingly blurred by the use of new surveillance technologies. Taken together, these surveillance rituals constitute the building blocks of a rapidly emerging society of discipline, one increasingly stripped of personal privacy, individual trust, and a viable public life that supports and maintains democratic values and practices.

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About the Author:

Bill Staples is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas.

Review:

This book is very well written. . . . It offers a fascinating chronicle of the rage to invent new forms of surveillance, as well as pithy conceptualizations that organize the empirical materials nicely. As such, it clearly meets Staples's stated goal of providing an accesible undergraduate textbook. (Social Forces)

The suggestion made by Everyday Surveillance that a 'quiet revolution' is occuring in which we are all targets is a thought provoking one. It reminds us that we all are responsible for encouraging surveillance by being seduced by its promises, fearing the consequences without it and heralding it as society's salvation. The book flags up some new directions in which the study of visual, informational and communication technologies might profitably head. (British Journal Of Criminology)

Lively and engaging. Instructors looking for a sociological treatment of an interesting contemporary issue will find that this book would provoke discussion and debate among students in undergraduate or graduate courses. (Contemporary Sociology)

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