Fear Of Surveillance

Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s work, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, examines how American societal changes are reflected on the female body. Brumberg’s work draws primarily from the diaries of young American girls, giving intimate glimpses into the inner workings of their minds about how they relate to their bodies.

Louise Halfe’s “Body Politics” challenges the qualities and behaviour of the idealized feminine woman by contrasting the stereotypical “city woman” with a more masculine “real woman.” The poem’s speaker describes her mother’s opinion of what it means to be a real woman, which is seen through “Mama said.” Throughout the poem, the speaker uses vivid imagery to create a stark contrast between the idealized feminine “city woman” and a “real woman” who does not conform to the feminine gender norm. To begin with, the title of the poem itself can be viewed as an obvious critique of the feminine ideal. By definition a body politic is a group of people “considered as a collective unit” (Merriam-Webster). This is significant because in Butler’s theory, she emphasizes that a person’s gender can vary depending on a given situation, and therefore women cannot be grouped together and defined exclusively by their feminine qualities. Instead, she argues that women should be viewed as individuals capable of possessing both masculine and feminine behaviour. This belief relates directly to the poem’s title, as Halfe is clearly making a statement on the manner in which patriarchal societies expect women to conform to a singular feminine ideal. Moreover, it illustrates how women’s bodies become a political site for the masculinist culture to impose feminine gender on. With consideration to the title’s reference to a homogeneous group of women, it is interesting that stanzas two through four all

Foucault once stated, “Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests” (301). By this, he means that our society is full of constant supervision that is not easily seen nor displayed. In his essay, Panopticism, Foucault goes into detail about the different disciplinary societies and how surveillance has become a big part of our lives today. He explains how the disciplinary mechanisms have dramatically changed in comparison to the middle ages. Foucault analyzes in particular the Panopticon, which was a blueprint of a disciplinary institution. The idea of this institution was for inmates to be seen but not to see. As Foucault put it, “he is the object of information, never a subject in

With the seemingly exponential propagation of inexpensive digital communications technologies over recent years, the general public is becoming more aware of the issues surrounding information privacy and government surveillance in the digital age. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a smart-phone has to be wary of how they use their private information for fear of that information being collected and used in a way contrary to their wishes. "Leaky" smartphone apps that transmit private information across the internet can be unethically used by government agencies. The issue of privacy is a balancing act; the public usually wants increased privacy and the government usually wants increased access.

The phrase “social construction” is difficult to define as it encompasses a multitude of elements, but despite that, conventionally, social construction shows ways society has conceptualised expectations and ideals which can be related to specific sociological interested areas, such as the body. Social action has been shown to have an effect on the transformation of a biological individual, although bodies appear to be simply natural - eye colour, body shape, size of feet etc - a deeper context reveals that many social situations and factors contribute to the construction of bodies. How are we to make sense of people’s bodies? Theoretical traditions which highlight socially constructed bodies have been put forward by theorists such as Elias, Foucault, Goffman and Bourdieu, however, an alternative strategy of viewing socially constructed bodies could be to link these apparently contrasting theories together. This essay will focus upon ways in which the body appears to be a social construction, paying particular detail on the length individuals endure to perform socially constructed ideals with reference to gender and class.

According to Foucault, power does not belong to the individual, but to the system, to the institution. In his essay on Discipline and Punish, Foucault presents his idea of the panopticon mechanism, a mechanism in which visibility is a trap. With little importance over the actual individual in the role of the observer or of the observed, the object of the system is total power over the observed. Due to the unique shape of the panopticon, there are no corners and thus no blind spots for the observed to hide in. The private space is replaced by the public one. Furthermore, as final evidence of total control, the observed never knows for sure if they are being watched or not, as they can’t see the observer (Foucault 200-205). Foucault further argues that this system is followed by any government institution, placing the society under permanent observation. Individuals might try to evade the system, but achieving liberation and freedom is not something that anyone could do. Dostoevsky’s famous novel, Crime and

A third way I do not experience surveillance like marginalized groups is through illegal border crossing. In this presidential term, the rhetoric and actions towards immigration are extremely negative, making it harder for immigrants to come to the United States. As a white citizen, I will never experience the difficulty of crossing the Mexican border like illegal immigrants do. Frequently many of the spots illegal immigrants cross the border at are the most dangerous and involve crossing harsh areas in the desert (Gilliom and Monahan, 2013 p. 112-113). Another mode of surveillance against non U.S. citizens is drones in Pakistan. In the article, “Living Under Drones,” there is evidence drones have killed more than 2,500 people in 2004-2012, including many civilians and children. These drones cause physical damage to homes and cars, bodily damage, and psychological damage to victims under 24/7

The rules manifest into a bigger issue for women—their views on their body. The views can lead to a female comparing herself to another person, and the judgements of their body furthers a female’s

Foucault's "Panopticism" (1979) is a careful piece that talks about how a panoptic framework would impact culture, society, the political, and individuals. Foucault describes panopticon is to “induce the inmate a state of conscious and visibility that assures the automatic function of power.” Foucault mentions, surveillance has a lasting effects, regardless of the fact that it is discontinuous in its activity; that the perfection of power ought to render its real unneeded practice. The Inmates are in a dominating circumstance that they are them-selves the bearers. Foucault (201, 202–3) also mentions that "He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and knows it, expect responsibility regardless of the constrains of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon

Originally an architectural model for a prison (Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon), American philosopher Michel Foucault applies the panopticon’s characteristics – which include: the lack of privacy; the forced conformity and changes in behaviour to cope with the lack of privacy; and lack of knowledge of who is watching you, why they are watching you, how, or whether you are being watched or not– to our modern world (Simon 2-3). Bart Simon argues, “To know one is being seen without being able to see carries with it uncertainty that becomes a source of anxiety, discomfort and terror” (Simon 4). In other words, feeling that you are being watched causes stress, which ultimately leads to “normalization” and “conformity” – changing our behaviour (which mimics the behaviour of those around us) to adapt (Simon 4-5, 7; Langlois). Furthermore, in the panoptic prison of our everyday world, we are inmates who try to adapt to the slow deterioration of our right to privacy. Citizenfour, presents the concepts of privacy and surveillance following the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, along with the behavioural effects of knowing one is relentlessly being watched by the state. Through the behaviour of Edward Snowden and the director’s use of symbolism, Citizenfour reveals the panoptic prison present in our modern

The body not only defines you, but also in a way is a reflection of your culture. The author states, “The body is a powerful symbolic form, a surface on which the central rules, hierarchies of a culture are inscribed and reinforced. The body in a way is a blueprint for diagnosis and/or vision of social and political life. Through ideology, organizations and regulation of time, space, and movements of our daily lives; our bodies are trained, shaped, and impressed with the stamp of prevailing historical forms of selfhood, desire, masculinity, and femininity.” With that being said, our bodies are forced by us to be chiseled in a way the media inscribes to us a “beautiful.” For women you have to be skinny, have enlarged boobs, have a small waist, clear skin and now a days have a “fat butt”; whereas for men your body must be simply better than a six

“Our society is not one of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues the meticulous concrete training of useful forces; the circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralization of knowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorages of power; it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies. (pp.333-34)”

Despite the dehumanizing effect of Panopticon as an disciplinary mechanism based on constant observation and examination with every movement supervised and all events recorded. The Panopticon system as one of the most effective and economic models of exercising power and control over an constantly increasing population, soon became a formula, wide spread throughout our society. Along with the growing ethnology and capitalist economy, various methods of Panopticon through mass surveillance soon earned it’s place in numerous regimes, becoming one of the most infinitely expandable Panopticon of the contemporary society.

Sandra Bartky begins her piece by explaining Michel Foucault’s ideas about modern power dynamics. Unlike in the past, power in modern society focuses not only on controlling the products of the body but, rather, on governing all its activities. In order for this power to continue, people are disciplined into becoming “docile bodies” which are subjected and practiced (Bartky, 63). This discipline is imposed through constant surveillance in a manner similar to the Panopticon. Inmates in said prison are always visible to a guard in the central tower, so they mentally coerced into monitoring their own behavior. In the same way, individuals become their own jailers and subject themselves to the society’s whim due to being in a “state of conscious and permanent visibility” to its all-seeing eye (65). Bartky, however, breaks from Foucault’s theory by claiming that there is a clear difference in the disciplines imposed on men and women that are ignored in the latter’s writings.

Sociology of the body examines how our modern world affects our physical and symbolic bodies. Institutional forces play a major role in the changes that our physical and symbolic bodies go through. In fact, sociology of the body can be seen through our health, body image, and sexuality. Many people spend countless hours unsatisfied with their appearance, and some actually believe that it actually affects how people view themselves as human beings. However, people really only remember you how your treat them. The most important category within the sociology of the body is health and illness. Without health, our body wouldn’t function normally. In addition, a growing number of people feel ashamed about their bodies and tend to diet too often