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DAVID LYON (ed.), Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond. Portland, OR: Willan Publishing, 2006, xui+336 p., Index.
Within the field of surveillance studies, Michel Foucault's panopticon metaphor has prevailed as a conceptual exemplar for understanding modern forms of social regulation. Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond draws critically upon the question of its relevance in a postpanoptic world. Readers are thus compelled to contemplate the possibility that the panopticon might have run its course as a useful explanatory frame, particularly in light of the complex conditions of contemporary surveillance practices. Indeed, David Lyon's introductory chapter conveys a tone of ambivalence in the field around this question, noting that while the panopticon is a "rich and multifaceted concept," surveillance theorists might need to move beyond its conceptual boundaries in order to make space for new ways of thinking around the manifold functions and implications of surveillance mechanisms (4). Scholars in the field are provided here with a useful entry point for debate around this question.
What follows is a solid and instructive collection that draws upon several core themes in surveillance studies (e.g., power, normativity, resistance, subjectivity, and visibility, to name a few). It does so through alternative theoretical frameworks or, in some cases, with considerably nuanced Foucauldian interpretations of key problematics in the field. Thus, while the aim of the volume is to transcend the confines of panoptic analyses of surveillance, Foucault still finds a presence here. Mark Cole, for example, employs Foucault's "technologies of the self to demonstrate the ways in which reflective and confessional practices are deeply embedded in programs of Continuing Professional Development among health care professionals in the United Kingdom. William Bogard applies insights from Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari to explore lines of resistance entrenched in the very structures of surveillance assemblages themselves.