Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION, REFLEXIVITY AND SURVEILLANCE
These prospects may be chilling, but they are certainly not imaginings from
the wild side of science fiction. They are logical extensions of the imperative to
surveille that lies at the heart of the nation state (Gandy, 1993) and the organised
lives we live. It is essential to acknowledge that surveillance is an integral
feature of all modern societies and that ‘there is no obvious and simple political
programme to develop in coping with [it]’ (Giddens, 1985, p. 310). With Giddens
we have to accept that surveillance is reducible neither to ‘capitalism’ nor to
‘industrialism’. We have to conclude, also with Giddens, that ‘aspects of totalitarian
rule are a threat’ in all advanced societies precisely because surveillance
is ‘maximised in the modern state’ (p. 310).
Corporate surveillance
Most of this chapter has concerned itself with the spread of surveillance at the
behest of the nation state. However, in drawing on Giddens’s work to lead us
towards a clearer understanding of state surveillance, we should not forget
capitalist enterprises’ contribution to the trend. Giddens himself does not ignore
the part played by capitalist endeavour, stating tartly: ‘Surveillance in the
capitalist enterprise is the key to management’ (1987, p. 175). A good case can
be made for the view that management, an invention of the twentieth century, is
in essence a category of information work, a central purpose of which is to
surveille exhaustively the corporation’s spheres of action, the better then to plan
and operationalise strategies which ensure capital’s best return on investment
(Robins and Webster, 1989, pp. 34–52). As the pivotal figure of scientific management,
F. W. Taylor (1947), argued, the raison d’être of managers is to act as
information specialists – ideally as monopolists – as close observers, analysts and
planners of capital’s interests.
A starting point for management, and the particular concern of Taylor, was
the production process, long a problem, but becoming particularly intractable
with the development of large plants and workforces in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. There is a very extensive literature on the response of
corporate capitalism to this, focusing on the growth of scientific management
(e.g. Braverman, 1974; Noble, 1977), which emphasises that managers were
designated to perform the ‘brainwork’ (Taylor) of organisations, the better to
exert effective control over what they manage.
A moment’s reflection makes clear that modern management monitors
production very closely as a requisite of much else. However, the purview of
management nowadays is necessarily much wider than work processes (Fox,
1989). Central to understanding this is realisation that corporate capitalism has
expanded this century in three key ways. First, corporations have grown spatially,
such that typically the leading corporations have at least a national, and usually
a transnational, presence. Second, corporations have consolidated into fewer and
much bigger players than previously, such that typically a cluster of organisations
dominates major market segments. Third, and easily overlooked, corporations
have burrowed deeper into the fabric of society, both by developing the outlet
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