Surveillance Power in Global Capitalism

Abstract

Chapter 11 is a hypothetical exploration of one of the most fundamental forms of modern social power, that of extended surveillance and its exercise. In particular, this essay asks questions about how panopticism — involving, as was noted in Chapter 7, both the self-discipline of élites and state cadres and their extended surveillance of populations — is related to the constitution and contradictions of global capitalism, and how this may set limits to emancipatory forms of collective action.