Control Society

The idea of the control society was proposed by Burroughs, written about by Paul Virilio, and thought by Foucault to be quickly approaching (Deleuze, 1995). According to Deleuze (1995), there are distinct differences between disciplinary societies which Foucault predominately researched and and those of control societies which he saw advancing. According to Deleuze, Foucault theorized that disciplinary societies predominated the 18th and 19th centuries and hit their peak in the 20th century. Disciplinary societies were organized around major sites of confinement such as the family, school, barracks, factory, hospital, and prison. Citizens moved through these locations from one closed site to another, and one had to start over each time one moved from site to site. Regarding the people in these spaces, there were two poles in disciplinary societies; signatures standing for individuals and numbers or positions in registers for the masses; both poles were compatible. This means that each person stood for something individual in a larger mass of people. Signatures got people access to the spaces they desired. Signatures told who someone was and differentiated them from others in the masses. Disciplinary societies were also organized around a second generation of machines. No longer concerned with simpler machines from sovereign societies such as pulleys, levers, and clocks, disciplinary technology was organized around larger technology like thermodynamic machines and factories.

Control societies sees these elements as playing out in different ways, however. While these same sites of confinement such as the family, school, barracks, factory, hospital, and prison still exist, in control societies, while these sites are analogical independent variables, they are united by forms of control which are united by a digital language. One can never really leave the institution in a society of control because these digital languages transcend institutional sites. With technology no longer being limited to the factory or thermodynamic machines, the control society revolves more around computers and IT. Because of this change in tools (among many other factors which aren't discussed here), technology begins to keep track of citizens beyond institutional sites through a digital language. This digital language changes the disciplinary poles of signature and register number to codes and passwords which are no longer really compatible with the idea there is a separate pole for the masses. Whereas the disciplinary society saw the individual signature and masses as compatible, the control society sees the code or password as solely a "dividual" and the masses just as something like a "samples, data, [or] markets" (p. 180). Dividuals can't be separated from their sample or data which they are caught up in, and the only way for acceptance is for your code to indicate access granted or denied by a computer which compares the dividual to the other samples in databases. A dividual gets access due to the computer "making sure sure everyone is in a permissible place" (p. 182) and not just the password itself. Because control becomes unhinged from sites of confinement, control becomes constant and the idea of one separate institutional site breaks down. This breakdown forces institutions to constantly be in a state of reform and change in order to keep up with the new ways of "freedom" which inevitably also leads to more monitoring. I.e., because technology can now keep track of criminal offenders through ankle bracelets, the prison is breaking down and policing can be done in homes via house arrest. So while the prison site still exists, a prisoner can be found to be statistically safe by comparing his or her information to a larger pool of data, so the offender's name in a computer becomes passcoded for house arrest. Then, the institution must react by changing their policies and forms of control/surveillance to ensure that the individual stay in the home. Beyond the prison system, education is breaking down, hospitals are breaking down, and other sites of confinement are breaking down. We no longer just have tests in schools at the end of subject units; we have continuous assessment. that monitors students as they move through classes and grades. We no longer just treat patients when they come to hospitals, we try to identify risk factors such as smoking and convince smokers to stop before they make it to the hospitals. In control societies, one is ultimately free to move in sites which are breaking down but ultimately confined to a language of control which makes them one of the masses and reduces one to a passcode of access and subject to constant monitoring.

This term was coined by Deleuze in 1992 and discusses the idea that contemporary power (i.e., corporations and capital) circulates in ways that are no longer tethered to place, and this creates fragmented and dispersed networks of people (Nadesan, 2013, p. 5).

Similarities and differences are reduced to code - codes which contain predictions of events, conditions, and behaviors which are yet to happen (Lyon, 2003, p. 24).

According to Lyon (2007), "Whereas Foucault had theorized surveillance in the context of confined fixed spaces like the Panopticon, Deleuze proposed that such old sites of confinement were no longer the only or the primary sites of surveillance. The erstwhile 'analogical' sites are now paralleled by new digital means...The new surveillance is individualized and competitive, appropriate to the new businesses that emerged from later twentieth-century restructuring, where constant monitoring checks worker activities and individual inducements provide incentives for compliance" (p. 60).

According to Staples (2000), forms of social control vary from the "soft" and seemingly benign security cameras and behind the scenes control of floor designs for employee surveillance, computerized inventory through cash registers,offsite credit assessors, loyalty cards for customer preferences, employee log in/log out schedules, etc. at businesses. There are also the "hard" obtrusive, more confrontational practices that may assume guilt like sensor gates at the exits of businesses, random drug tests, lie detectors, pre-employment integrity tests, sobriety tests, house arrest, curfews and metal detectors (p. 2-3). These are designed to watch our bodies and subsequently control our actions in the name of safety or sound business practices. Overall though, "the intent of social control is to mold, shape, and modify actions and behaviors" (p. 3). Staples calls these microtechniques of social monitoring "meticulous rituals of power" that are often enhanced by technology. Historically, these controls have emerged due to a less close community- shopkeepers no longer know their customers and rely on other types of control (p.5).

According to Jewkes (2004), actuarial discourse means a type of discourse of social control that has moved from reactive to proactive (p. 179). I.e., CCTV is designed to stop problems before they start.

According to Lyon (2007), contingent categorization becomes a way to control people in a digital city , and this is part of the shift to Deleuze's society of control. Richard Jones calls this the 'digital rule' (p. 107).

References:

Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations 1972-1990 (M. Joughin, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Lyon, D. (2003). "Introduction" In D. Lyon, ed Surveillance as social sorting: Privacy, risk, and digital discrimination. New York: Routledge.

Lyon, D. (2007). Surveillance studies: An overview.

Nadesan, M.H. (2008). Governmentality, biopower, and everyday life. Florence, KY: Routledge.

Jewkes, Y. (2004). Media & crime: Key approaches to criminology. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Staples, W. G. (2000). Everyday surveillance: Vigilance and visibility in postmodern life. 2^nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.