Toggle Main Menu Toggle Search

Open Access padlockePrints

The 'Surveillance Society': Questions of History, Place and Culture

Lookup NU author(s): Dr David Murakami Wood

Downloads

Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.


Abstract

The concept of the `surveillance society' has become a central part of the emerging transdisciplinary narrative of surveillance studies, and is now to be found as much in criminology as in many of the other domains upon which it draws. This piece takes on two key problems generated by contemporary use of the term `surveillance society'; those of its historical novelty and its general geographical or cultural generalizability. In this article, I show that the historical development of arguments about surveillance have created particular and changing ideas of the `surveillance society'. However the contemporary period opens up questions of geography and culture. With reference to the comparative case of Japan, I argue both that a contextual understanding of both surveillance and `surveillance society' is crucial. While surveillance is involved with processes of globalization, it is also not necessarily the same `surveillance society' that one sees in different places and at different scales. Surveillance is historically, spatially and culturally located.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Murakami Wood D

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: European Journal of Criminology

Year: 2009

Volume: 44

Issue: 2

Pages: 179-194

ISSN (print): 1477-3708

ISSN (electronic): 1741-2609

Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1477370808100545

DOI: 10.1177/1477370808100545


Altmetrics

Altmetrics provided by Altmetric


Share