Postmodernism
Surveillance and the society of control
According to Staples (2000), the postmodern society has emerged since WWII and has grown in intensity since the 1970s. It "is a culture characterized by fragmentation and uncertainty as many of the once-taken-for-granted meaning, symbols, and institutions of modern life dissolve before our eyes. Time as well as social and geographical space are highly compressed by rapidly changing computer and advanced technologies, information storage and retrieval, and scientific and medial knowledge. Ours is a culture deeply penetrated by communities and consumer 'lifestyles.' In our day it would seem that consumption rather than production has become the wellspring of society, while highly (bureaucratic (although increasingly 'decentralized') state agencies attempt to order and regulate social life. What is "real" in this culture is presented to us through the mass media in imagery that has become the primary source of our cultural knowledge. We are offered a nonstop barrage of "crisis-level" social problems, leaving us wondering "what the world is coming to." In turn, we are left cynically mistrusting each other and furthering the disintegration of public life and discourse. This cultural hysteria creates a fertile ground for those selling "science" and the seemingly innocent and "advance" technological fixes that claim will ease our fears. Under these conditions, we turn to increasingly more pervasive, rational, and predictable means of surveillance and social control. In essence, we are seduced into believing that subjecting ourselves to more and more meticulous rituals is an unfortunate but necessary condition given the apparent tide of problems we face. The forging conditions from what I will refer to simply as "the everyday life of the postmodern," and it is in this cultural context, I believe, that we continue to struggle with problems and issues which arose during the early nineteenth century" (p. 8).
References:
Staples, W. G. (2000). Everyday surveillance: Vigilance and visibility in postmodern life. 2nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.