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stimulation of economic activity. Steering (but not “managing”) the economy becomes a
principal objective of the state. Security is achieved by predicting and managing events,
facilitating the circulation of persons, goods and ideas, and stabilising expectations. 81
Prioritising “security” involves viewing the population as the proper domain of
state activity: its primary responsibility is to create conditions in which that
population can flourish.
Security requires more extensive knowledge than “discipline”, including management of
probabilities, series and events. Foucault notes that the structure of knowledge peculiar
to security, in this sense, is “case, risk, danger, and crisis”. 82 The task of knowledge (and
here we return to the theme of “surveillance”) is to isolate specific cases that may threaten
the population’s well-being; 83 to assess the risk to various sections of the population; and
to identify, assess the dangers that give rise to risk, in order to prevent crisis.
The term “statistic”, Foucault tells us, dates from 1749 and etymologically means “state
science”. 84 From this period, data became the instrument of a state now premised on
“good government” rather than “prohibition” (discipline). 85 Among its objectives were
the management and stimulation of desire in the people themselves, because individual
self-interest would sustain the economy. 86
The relevance of all this to the subject at hand is, again, hopefully clear.
First, the security emphasis on steering clearly describes contemporary government
more accurately than the disciplinary metaphor of the panopticon. As we have already
seen, the rise of contemporary surveillance technologies coincided with a resurgence of
a what we might call a “physiocratic” (or “neoliberal”) approach to economic ordering that
privileges the private over the public and assumes that better outcomes are produced
through incentives than command and control.
The rise of contemporary surveillance technologies coincided with a
resurgence of a what we might call a “physiocratic” (or “neoliberal”) approach
to economic ordering that privileges the private over the public and assumes that
better outcomes are produced through incentives than command and control.
Second, the general approach to knowledge that Foucault outlines (the application of
statistics to steer policy and public expectations, by foresight and pre-emption rather
than command) is clearly central to the functioning of the contemporary state. Much
contemporary surveillance clearly aims at this kind of analysis. Medical records are an
obvious case in point, as are police records, including DNA databases (see Chapter 5).
Of course, such information-collection raises privacy concerns, but these are obviously
distinct from the constant invasive monitoring – the exercise of control – associated with
the panopticon.
81 Foucault (2009), 18–21; Foucault (2009), 72.
82 Citations in this paragraph are from Foucault (2009), 60–61.
83 “[N]ot the individual case, but a way of individualizing the collective phenomenon.”
84 Foucault (2009), 101, 104–5, 274, 283.
85 “For example: knowledge of the population, the measure of its quantity, mortality, natality; reckoning of
the different categories of individuals of the state and of their wealth; assessment of the potential wealth
available to the state, mines and forests, etc.; assessment of the wealth in circulation, the balance of
trade, and measures of the effects of taxes and duties” (274).
86 Foucault (2009), 73.
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