Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION, REFLEXIVITY AND SURVEILLANCE
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both ‘allocative resources’ (planning, administration) and ‘authoritative resources’
(power and control) and that, while these tend to converge in the modern state,
a prerequisite of both is effective surveillance. It follows therefore that:
modern societies have been . . . ‘information societies’ since their inception.
There is a fundamental sense . . . in which all states have been ‘information
societies’, since the generation of state power presumes reflexively gathering,
storage, and control of information, applied to administrative ends. But in
the nation state, with its peculiarly high degree of administrative unity, this
is brought to a much higher pitch than ever before.
(Giddens, 1985, p. 178)
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What we have here is the contention that, if we want to designate as an ‘information
society’ one in which information is crucial for its operation, then we may
look to the nation state, since it is with the establishment of territories and sovereignty
over such boundaries that we may discern an imperative for routine and
systematic surveillance.
But this is too abstract. What we need to do is to elaborate more of the detail
of the argument that the nation state has a particular interest in and reliance upon
information gathering and storage. That way we can appreciate some of the
specific forms informational developments have taken in recent history. Essential
to this task is to describe further some of the major features of the nation state.
First, the modern world is constituted by nation states. This is in no way to underestimate
the process of what is now known as globalisation (to which Giddens
gives much attention). I discussed some of these issues in Chapter 4, but here the
emphasis on the division of the world into nation states gives us sensitivity to
vitally important features of modern life. Among these are that nation states are
essential to many, perhaps most, people’s identities. To the majority, national
allegiance (‘I am British, French, German, American’) is a central element of their
being. The issue of national identity is complex, fraught – and at the core of a
great deal of modern political movements. At one pole, whether one watches
one’s national football team on television and wills them to win or roots for one’s
country’s representatives at the Olympics, there is evidence here of national
consciousness of some sort. At another, we have expressions of nationalism that
are autocratic, racist and belligerent – the ‘ethnic cleansing’ pursued in former
Yugoslavia is a reminder of just how virulent this can be. But everywhere, to a
greater or lesser degree, nation states influence identities by constructing mythic
pasts made up of legends and literature, traditions and celebrations, customs
and caricatures. Study of these ‘collective identities’ (Schlesinger, 1991) has produced
a voluminous literature, all of which agrees that they are a core feature of
modernity, however varied and nuanced they might be.
However much analysis may cast doubt on the veracity of ‘national identity’,
the fact remains that it has had an extraordinary potency in modern history. As
many a Marxist has had to concede, the masses have wrapped themselves in
their national flags with much more alacrity than they have followed the call
of ‘workers of the world unite’. Moreover, always, in defining who belongs to a
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