Panoptic Gaze Research Articles

English

The panoptic gaze is vested in with a constitutive impact upon the subjectivity of individuals. Feminist scholars like Luce Irigaray have charged that the metaphor of vision is intimately connected with the construction of gender and sexual difference. By pointing to the masculine logic of Western thought, Irigaray confirms that a woman’s entry into a dominant scopic economy signifies her inevitable confinement to passivity. This essay aims to examine the sexual politics of metaphors of vision in a literary text that is controversially argued to be a voice for the subordinated Indian immigrant women in the US. As one of the most influential schools of thought in Western philosophy, the Sartrean paradigm of sexual difference is employed to investigate this allegation by identifying the latent binary system at work in the fiction of Jhumpa Lahiri, who has garnered substantial yet controversial critical attention over her representations of gender. Specifically, this essay focuses on Lahiri’s prefatory story to her Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (2000), to unravel the manner her exercise of vision in this narrative perpetuates the dichotomies of a male subject and a female object pre-established in the traditional hierarchies of gender in the West. In this story, Lahiri (un)wittingly privileges masculinity over femininity and reduces the latter to a typically disgusting Sartrean female body of holes and slime. Hence, notwithstanding infrequent emasculated images of the male subject, it is ultimately the masculine that, in the battle of looks between male and female, nihilates the Other to the state of “being-in-itself” and enjoys supremacy over the feminine. DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/gema-2016-1602-08

Citizens under Suspicion: Responsive Research with Community under Surveillance

In the 14 years since the 9/11 events, this nation as a whole, and New York City in particular, has escalated its state-sanctioned surveillance in the lives and activities of Muslims in the United States. This qualitative study examines the ramifications of police infiltration and monitoring of Muslim student and community-based organizations. Drawing upon 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork among multiple research sites with Muslim secondary and college students in New York City, I examine how surveillance affected the relationships within communities utilizing notions of power, panoptic gaze, and governmentality. From the participatory action ethnographic study, which included this researcher's observations and field notes of meetings, forums, and workshops, and 25 semistructured interviews, key findings show that an insidious result of the New York Police Department's Demographics Unit has been an alarming rise in self-discipline behaviors amid a culture of fear and panoptic gaze as well as diminished intercommunity trust and sense of solidarity among these youth themselves.

Management of acceptable use of computing facilities in the public library: avoiding a panoptic gaze?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the language utilised in Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) in Scottish public libraries. Through this examination the paper aims to ascertain if power relationships between local authorities, public libraries and users are apparent. Finally, the paper aims to determine if Foucault’s theory of panopticism is relevant to public libraries in this context. Design/methodology/approach – The paper analyses all 32 of the AUPs used in Scottish public libraries, applying a Foucaldian discourse analysis to the content of the policies. Findings – By thorough examination of the literature the researchers were able to extract ten key features that ought to appear in an AUP. It was found that only one of 32 local authorities included information relating to all of these features. It was also found that one local authority contained as few as four of these key features. The median number of features included in the policies was seven. It was also found that power relationships are evident and can be perceived throughout the AUPs. By identifying the key Foucauldian themes of discipline, surveillance, knowledge, and power and resistance throughout the AUPs, the researchers were able to analyse and identify the existence of power relationships and consider the implications these could have on users and on the library services being provided. Research limitations/implications – The study examines one geographic region, and is only indicative of the region concerned. In addition the usage of the qualitative methodology utilised could be deemed to have elements of subjectivity. Practical implications – The study would be of benefit to researchers and professionals interested in issues around AUPs and surveillance of library users. Originality/value – The use of Foucaldian discourse analysis is limited in library and information science research, and this study helps fill this gap. It is the first study the researchers have found that critically examines a range of public library AUPs.

The Era of New Media: The Construction of Ecological Ethics Concerning Privacy With the “Carnival” and “Panoptic Gaze” as Its Background

New media refers to the forms of transmitting information through which information and services are offered to customers by using digital techonology, network technology and mobile technology through such terminals as computers, mobile phones and digital televisions. In the era of new media, the subjects participating in privacy disclosure are diversified, the scope of privacy disclosure becomes larger, the attitude involved in privacy exposure tends to be rude, and the negative influence of privacy exposure is irreversible. Under such circumstances, it is not sufficient to address the problem of privacy disclosure only by means of law, ecological ethical privacy featuring market supervision, self-discipline, public consciousness and social tolerance should be established in deed.

Remaking markets in the mountains: integration, trader agency and resistance in upland northern Vietnam

As part of an ongoing agenda by Vietnamese lawmakers and local state officials to accelerate market integration in the northern mountains, rural marketplaces are being physically and managerially restructured according to standard state-approved models. Moreover, these market directives are coherent with the ‘distance demolishing technologies’ that James Scott (2009) suggests the state has implemented to bring these uplands more directly under its panoptic gaze. This integration strategy seldom meshes well with upland livelihood needs. In this paper we examine a number of power contestations currently unfolding as upland market traders – both Vietnamese and ethnic minorities – negotiate or resist these developments while striving to maintain meaningful livelihoods.

(In)visibility Before Privacy: A Theological Ethics of Surveillance as Social Sorting

This article offers a theological ethics of surveillance in its form as social sorting. The skill of (in)visibility is deployed as an analytical device to critique the saliency of privacy rights-talk, given the focus of surveillance having shifted from a panoptic gaze to actionable intelligence. The claim is made that an ideology of normativity and the political categories of ‘evil’ and ‘risky’ persons can be addressed by the notions of relational knowledge (Muers), the resurrection of the non-person (Swinton) and the power of the future (Moltmann). Three biblical vignettes illustrate (in)visibility and offer imaginative responses.

Reimaging Educational Management and Leadership: Trajectories From The Prison Environment

The article makes a claim that educational management and leadership in the musical arts discipline generally extend beyond the boundaries of formal education institutions to include and embrace other music education endeavours in other settings of both the young and old, even offenders. Within this space I present some of the encounters with the participants of the music participatory action research (MPAR) in one of the prisons in the Mthatha Medium Correctional Centre (MMCC) in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. I draw from Michel Foucault’s philosophical theory of governing or governmentality to gain a better understanding of the potential of Foucauldian ideas in analysing educational practices and processes and the wider strategies and techniques of panopticism in the prison environment of how offenders in constructing their new identities as lifelong learners, leaders and managers committed to reconstructing their identities as rehabilitated citizens and artists. I further look at the nature of the collaboration between the community groups to argue for the significance of dialogical interactions among participants for effective reconceptualisation and construction of new identities of offenders as artistic leaders and managers ready for integration into the society. Findings revealed that offenders involved in music activities in prison, although they are not completely panoptic-free, are nevertheless panoptic-conscious, or what I call ‘panoptic-wise’. They are free to participate in music activities and perform to the very people they are subjected to, thus, subverting the authoritarian, panoptic gaze into the gaze of an audience.

Between surveillance and subjectification: Professionals and the governance of quality and patient safety in English hospitals

Two understandings of the dynamics of power developed by Foucault have been extensively used in analyses of contemporary healthcare: disciplinary power and governmentality. They are sometimes considered alternative or even contradictory conceptual frameworks. Here, we seek to deploy them as complementary ways of making sense of the complexities of healthcare organisation today. We focus on efforts to improve quality and safety in three UK hospitals. We find a prominent role for disciplinary power, including a panoptic gaze that is to some extent internalised by professionals. We suggest, however, that the role of disciplinary power relies for its impact on complementary strategies that are more akin to governmentality. These strategies foster organisational contexts that are receptive to disciplinary work. More fundamentally, we find that both disciplinary power and governmentality work on subjectivities in rather a different manner from that suggested by conventional accounts. We offer an alternative, less individualised and more socialised, understanding of the way in which power acts upon subjectivity and behaviour in professional contexts.

Reimaging Educational Management and Leadership: Trajectories From The Prison Environment

The article makes a claim that educational management and leadership in the musical arts discipline generally extend beyond the boundaries of formal education institutions to include and embrace other music education endeavours in other settings of both the young and old, even offenders. Within this space I present some of the encounters with the participants of the music participatory action research (MPAR) in one of the prisons in the Mthatha Medium Correctional Centre (MMCC) in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. I draw from Michel Foucault’s philosophical theory of governing or governmentality to gain a better understanding of the potential of Foucauldian ideas in analysing educational practices and processes and the wider strategies and techniques of panopticism in the prison environment of how offenders in constructing their new identities as lifelong learners, leaders and managers committed to reconstructing their identities as rehabilitated citizens and artists. I further look at the nature of the collaboration between the community groups to argue for the significance of dialogical interactions among participants for effective reconceptualisation and construction of new identities of offenders as artistic leaders and managers ready for integration into the society. Findings revealed that offenders involved in music activities in prison, although they are not completely panoptic-free, are nevertheless panoptic-conscious, or what I call ‘panoptic-wise’. They are free to participate in music activities and perform to the very people they are subjected to, thus, subverting the authoritarian, panoptic gaze into the gaze of an audience.

Colombian Labor, Globalization and a Ray of Hope

While Colombian labor has been loathe to the country's recent consideration of a series of free trade agreements (FTAs), paradoxically debates surrounding the recently approved US-Colombia FTA have spawned greater security for unions and have attracted a global panoptic gaze with a capacity to protect and promote labor rights. But is too early to determine whether that capacity of liberation associated with global connectivity can translate into the establishment of human security for Colombian labor, the most besieged on the planet, from the wave of depletion it has endured since the 1990s. Between 2005 and 2010, 55 percent of all assassinations of trade unionists globally occurred in Colombia. We shall begin with an historical overview from which to consider the current plight of Colombian labor, and will then focus on pivotal events since the 1990s. Concentric spaces between classical realism, neo-Gramscian approaches, and Foucauldian thought are enlightening when analyzing both historical trends and future prospects. This piece will focus on unions in Colombia’s petroleum sector, which historically have been a flagship for the country's labor movement, and which have attracted added significance in the context of the current global commodity boom.

Ancestral Pueblo Villages and the Panoptic Gaze of the Commune

Aggregated villages with large, central plazas appeared across the Western Pueblo region of the US Southwest by the fourteenth century AD. We view the adoption of this settlement form not strictly as an adaptive response to economic and social circumstances, but rather as a reflection of changes in the social relations of power and conceptualizations of community in the Pueblo world. Enclosed plazas became a form of panoptic architecture, structuring what were intrinsically unequal social relations between individuals or groups and the entire communities of which they were a part. This process has implications for the emergence of new power relations in pre-state societies.

Performing Global Geographies: Time, Space, Place and Pace in Narratives of Round-the-World Travel

This paper explores the spatio-temporal dimensions of round-the-world travel by focusing on the way travellers weave together space and time in their round-the-world itineraries. Through an analysis of the narratives that round-the-world travellers publish online and recount in interviews, the paper argues that round-the-world itineraries map place, time and tempo into a global geography. The paper suggests that pace is of particular importance in this performance of a global geography. Travelling around the world at pace enables travellers to encounter the world through a mobile panoptic gaze that both produces and consumes difference. The constant movement of round-the-world travel produces difference by juxtaposing an array of places and rhythms within a single trip, while allowing the traveller to collect and consume those differences.

Beyond disciplinary enclosures: Management control in the society of control

This article aims to build on Norman Macintosh's use of eighteen and nineteen century disciplinary practices to analyze contemporary management control systems. The paper proposes, drawing from Gilles Deleuze's concept of the “society of control” (1992, 1995), that institutions are no longer crucial sites of normalization; rather, control is pervasive in the open environment through overlapping digital information systems characterized by speed, ubiquity and heightened accuracy. The article suggests that Macintosh's disciplinary studies of management control systems exclude from the analysis what lies beyond the boundaries that circumscribe the panoptic gaze. The society of control is an attempt to contemporize Foucault's discipline and its inclusion in accounting research may offer another set of conceptual tools to theorize management control systems, normalization and forms of resistance that the disciplinary approach has so far not adequately account for.

Ambient Anomie in the Virtualised Landscape? Autonomy, Surveillance and Flows in the 2020 Streetscape

Ambient Anomie in the Virtualised Landscape? Autonomy, Surveillance and Flows in the 2020 Streetscape

The Politics of the Gaze: Foucault, Lacan and Žižek

Joan Copjec accuses orthodox film theory of misrepresenting the Lacanian gaze by assimilating it to Foucauldian panopticon (Copjec 1994: 18–19). Although Copjec is correct that orthodox film theory misrepresents the Lacanian gaze, she, in turn, misrepresents Foucault by choosing to focus exclusively upon those aspects of his work on the panopticon that have been taken up by orthodox film theory (Copjec 1994: 4). In so doing, I argue, Copjec misses key parallels between the Lacanian and Foucauldian concepts of the gaze. More than a narrow academic dispute about how to read Foucault and Lacan, this debate has wider political significance. In particular, using Slavoj Žižek’s work, I show that a correct account of the panoptic gaze leads us to rethink the question of how to oppose modern techniques of surveillance.

The panoptic gaze in a non-western setting: self-surveillance on Merapi volcano, Central Java

Jeremy Bentham's late eighteenth century concept of the ‘panopticon’, popularized by Foucault two centuries later, has become a ubiquitous model for thinking about not merely surveillance but self-surveillance in the modern state. Foucault's analysis of the panopticon, and indeed perhaps the panopticon itself, is tied to a particular time and place of state development. What are the implications for this scholarship of different, non-western traditions of state surveillance? An effort is made to answer this questions drawing on a body of beliefs about volcanic hazard from the Sultanate of Yogyakarta in Central Java. It is believed that there is a spirit world inside the crater of Merapi volcano that mirrors the world of humans. By monitoring the volcano, it is thought that insight can be gained into what is happening in the everyday world. These beliefs thus represent a model for monitoring, for surveillance, for self-surveillance. The ways that this both resembles and differs from Bentham's and Foucault's model of the panopticon offers new insights into the cultural and historical dimensions of our current understandings of the state gaze. This analysis will also offer new insights into the applicability of Foucault's work on surveillance and governance in non-western contexts.

The regulation of British colonial lunatic asylums and the origins of colonial psychiatry, 1860–1864.

In this paper I outline a brief period in the history of the British Empire, during which colonial lunatic asylum policy began to be formulated. I begin with a scandal that erupted in Jamaica and suggest that this set in motion processes that led to critical changes in asylum administration. The first of these processes was an audit of hospitals and asylums in the colonies. The results of the audit and the policy that emerged from it marked the beginning of systematic regulation of lunatic asylum practice across the British Empire. It revealed a formulation of policy that was intended to cut across the self-governing regimes that had up to this point been allowed to evolve. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose, I argue that the policy and the practices associated with it contribute to an understanding of the emergence of the psy-sciences in colonial settings. They illustrate the establishment of a panoptic gaze on previously neglected insane spaces. Systematic surveillance constituted government at a distance and made colonial lunacy administration a governable discursive space. The regulation of the medical officers, lunatic attendants, and hospital boards began the process of creating a professional psychiatric workforce. I conclude with a discussion of the implications and the mixed impact of this policy change for the mentally ill across the empire, over the ensuing decades.

Friend Me if You Facebook: Generation Y and Performative Surveillance

Facebook was founded as a way to enhance face-to-face contact on university campuses, and so its virtual and physical life are unique on the internet. The performance of self online versus the performance of self “on ground” constitutes a particular dynamic. Members of the Facebook community use it to build and enhance their “real” relationships through their unique performances of online self, and these fluid performances, which may look like exhibitionism, are energetic engagements with the panoptic gaze: as people offer themselves up for surveillance, they also resist being fixed as rigid, unchanging subjects.

The panoptic gaze: Analysing the interaction between enterprise resource planning technology and organisational culture

The use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to deploy the panoptic gaze remains unresearched in the UK. Though there are studies outside the UK which use panoptic theory to investigate ERP systems, they do not analyse the influence the interaction between ERP technology and organisational culture have on the development of the panoptic gaze. The aim emerging from these issues was to understand whether ERP technology, organisational culture, or a combination of both could support development of the panoptic gaze in an organisation from the UK. The method selected was a qualitative case study of a UK organisation’s finance division, and the techniques used were semi-structured interviews and observations. The study suggests the ERP technology provided an infrastructure from which the panoptic gaze could be deployed. It was not deployed in this instance however, as the finance division’s culture did not emphasise workforce surveillance. The study therefore suggests that in addition to ERP technology a culture emphasising workforce surveillance was needed to develop the panoptic gaze. The findings support the social shaping concept as it was the finance division’s cultural context that influenced whether the ERP technology would be used to deploy the panoptic gaze.

Surveillant Discipline: Panoptic Vision in Early Christian Self-Definition

Michel Foucault’s groundbreaking work on power and knowledge has generated considerable interest among scholars seeking to clarify how these concepts operated in early Christian literature. One mode of power that Foucault identified as representative of the modern era finds expression in the Panopticon, the prison-house whose creator, Jeremy Bentham, designed to regulate inmates through observation. While Foucault thought that this technology marked a new age in the history of discipline and punishment, this essay argues that Bentham’s discussion of the panoptic gaze and its effects on those surveiled can be found in the literature of antiquity. Early Christian writers used panoptic rhetoric both to establish the authority of God, Jesus, and early Christian leaders and to encourage their audiences to watch over themselves and others. They thus sought to establish a ‘technology of the self’ and circumscribe communal boundaries based upon a system marked by surveillant discipline.