There are no pre-requisites for this module to be added

In this module you will look at the growth of the nation state and early forms of surveillance and how these have been challenged, refined, and adapted over time. You will consider notions of individual liberty and freedoms that accompanied the bourgeois revolutions of Western Europe and whether these ideals have been compromised with the growth of industrial capitalist society and the need for work discipline, time management and control. Within an analysis of organisational society, you will look at models of rationalisation, bureaucratisation, networking, and the supposed rise of `big brother’ and `total institutions’ drawing on the work of Weber, Foucault, Lyons and others. You will analyse traditional and new forms of surveillance drawing out the key techniques and technologies used and their social and cultural consequences. You will understand how, while surveillance is embedded through society, its social impact is unequally distributed, as individuals and groups are constantly sorted into categories attracting different levels of scrutiny. The work of Beck and Giddens on `risk society’ and Bauman on the fluidity and indeterminacy of contemporary social life along with the work of Furedi on the `culture of fear’ will provide useful heuristics that will enable you to develop a critical discourse of surveillant practice. You will consider how new surveillance technologies such as social media shape our understanding of and relationship with surveillance, and you will examine various forms of resistance to surveillance and their different aims, from privacy to social justice.

Upon completion of this module you will be able to

LO1: Critically evaluate the key dynamics and processes leading to the growth of surveillance cultures in our society, with emphasis on the contested nature of surveillance practices

LO2: Critically evaluate and apply sociological literature on specific surveillance technologies, systems, and cultures

LO3: Demonstrate a critical understanding of both `data mining’ and `systems creep’ and explain the dangers such systems of accounting and surveillance may pose

LO4: Explain how logics of capital accumulation, time management and control contribute to embedding surveillance in contemporary society

LO5: Evaluate the social impact of surveillance technologies and identify the unequal distribution of technology harms