Overview
This book highlights 'mundane' practices that increasingly influence our schools, homes and communities; cameras, Opagers', electronic monitoring instruments, the digital 'paper trail' of 'cashless' transactions, random drug testing, and 'integrity tests'. 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.
Synopsis
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.
Social Forces
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.