Surveillance and the Panopticon

In its simplest sense, surveillance is the act of observing or the condition of being observed, and it has always existed in some form. The term surveillance is generally used, however, to mean the act of watching or being watched in a systematic and focused manner. The Panopticon is a prison structure designed by Englishman Jeremy Bentham in 1785, which allows one guard to observe all the prison cells from a central tower that provides a view into each prison cell. The Panopticon is often used to illustrate the ways in which surveillance can discipline the individual. Surveillance strategies can have a specific impact on racialized and gendered identities that are often targeted in specific ways by surveillance. This entry looks at the impact surveillance technologies have had on the entertainment industry, the importance of surveillance in a post-9/11 world, the ways in which data collection constitutes a form of surveillance, the details of Bentham's Panopticon prison, Michel Foucault's influential ideas about surveillance, the impact of surveillance on racialized and gendered identities, and the development of a new field of scholarship, surveillance studies.

In the past few decades in Western countries, sophisticated surveillance technologies have been developed that make it possible to monitor the activities of just about anyone or to put oneself under observation for the purview of others. Although surveillance has traditionally been understood to be the act of watching someone without that person's explicit knowledge, with the proliferation of surveillance technologies in public spaces (cameras in elevators and closed-circuit televisions to monitor public spaces, for instance), people are now often aware that they are being watched or that there is a possibility that they may be watched. Additionally, surveillance now includes collection of information about the activities of an individual and is thus no longer understood as an exclusively visual activity.

Surveillance activities are particularly relevant to the modern age because they can be used to monitor workers in industrial and bureaucratic institutions. Such institutions can improve productivity and maximize effectiveness by tracking and [Page 804]collecting information about the movements and activities of workers, for example. More recently, in the era of globalization and corporatization, surveillance has become a vital consumer marketing tool. A Web site such as http://amazon.com, for example, stores information about purchases made and products viewed by a consumer and uses this data to pitch products to the consumer based on his or her individual tastes and habits.