XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

267

Surveillance Society: Power, Conflict and Solidarity. Thinking through the Electronic Eye

RC14 Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture (host committee)

Language: English

The book The electronic eye: the rise of surveillance society (1994), by David Lyon, is without a doubt one of the key studies in order to understand surveillance development studies on a global scale. Regardless of the centrality of other works developed further on by its author, this text, published more than twenty years ago, has been the subject of many reviews in the different languages it has been translated into, apart from being widely quoted. Therefore, it is a book that has been exploited intensively, even in critical terms as well, because it sets surveillance as one of the key pieces of society’s modern organization. Surveillance appears as a socio-technical crystallization which unfolds in different spheres of social life, promoting with it inequality and domination processes. However, surveillance is not only analyzed according to a political and economic rationality, but as a moral means of communication. It is then understood as a domination process, but also one with potential for developing solidarity. The first session has the objective of asking, in a critical way, about the current relevance of The electronic eye. What can it say to surveillance studies in these days, both in empirical and theoretical terms? The second session has the objective of asking about the cultural dimension of surveillance, how the cultures of surveillance can help to understand the makings of power and solidarity, citizenry and power on a global scale.