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Kevin D. Haggerty and Richard V. Ericson eds., The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006, 384 pp.
Over the past few years various edited volumes and books have been published that belong to the wider field of Surveillance Studies. The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility is a further major contribution to this field regarding the quality of the individual articles, the overall thematic range and its contribution to theory in the field itself. It will not be the last book on the subject, but will no doubt stand out as it holds important contributions to some basic theoretical questions by leading scholars in the field that have in the past decade issued groundbreaking works on surveillance.
Divided into three parts the collection of 15 articles focuses on the following major issues and themes: the theory of surveillance and visibility; the role of police and military surveillance; and the interplay between surveillance, electronic media and consumer culture. Each of these themes reflects various aspects that impact on current societies not only in the Western world, but which have an effect on life on this planet in general. However, the range of the topics dealt with, generates a problem that is given some consideration by Haggerty and Ericson in their introduction to the collection - namely that of the notion of surveillance itself. They ask if the category of surveillance remains adequate to capture the wide range of technologies and practices that operate in its name (21). The category of surveillance - like all categories - is simplifying, but with the rapid developments in surveillance this analytical term is in danger of becoming stretched beyond recognition. The practices of surveillance have simply become too multifaceted and chaotic that one term alone may not describe all aspects. Surveillance - they continue - is often seen as an instrument of enforced or enhanced conformity. While this holds true for many surveillance measures...