Under Surveillance: Being Watched in Modern America

by Randolph Lewis

Overview

“An engaging, alarming, and enlightening book, one that is certain to be among the most important books on surveillance in the twenty-first century.” —Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of Antisocial Media
 
Never before has so much been known about so many. CCTV cameras, TSA scanners, NSA databases, big data marketers, predator drones, “stop and frisk” tactics, Facebook algorithms, hidden spyware, and even old-fashioned nosy neighbors—surveillance has become so ubiquitous that we take its presence for granted. While many types of surveillance are pitched as ways to make us safer, almost no one has examined the unintended consequences of living under constant scrutiny and how it changes the way we think and feel about the world. In Under Surveillance, Randolph Lewis offers a highly original look at the emotional, ethical, and aesthetic challenges of living with surveillance in America since 9/11.
 
Taking a broad and humanistic approach, Lewis explores the growth of surveillance in surprising places, such as childhood and nature. He traces the rise of businesses designed to provide surveillance and security, including those that cater to the Bible Belt’s houses of worship. And he peers into the dark side of playful surveillance, such as eBay’s online guide to “Fun with Surveillance Gadgets.” A worried but ultimately genial guide to this landscape, Lewis helps us see the hidden costs of living in a “control society” in which surveillance is deemed essential to governance and business alike. Written accessibly for a general audience, Under Surveillance prompts us to think deeply about what Lewis calls “the soft tissue damage” inflicted by the culture of surveillance.
 
“A sprightly tour down some of the surveillance society’s most claustrophobic corridors.” —Cory Doctorow, New York Times–bestselling author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781477313817
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	02/24/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	276
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Randolph Lewis is a professor of American studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written extensively on how visual culture shapes our sense of the nation, often focusing on people who work outside the cultural mainstream. His previous books include Navajo Talking Picture: Cinema on Native Ground.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. Feeling Surveillance
• 2. Welcome to the Funopticon
• 3. Growing up Observed
• 4. Watching Walden
• 5. A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
• 6. The Business of Insecurity
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index

What People are Saying About This

Siva Vaidhyanathan

In this original take on the dilemma of constant surveillance, Randolph Lewis approaches the phenomenon of being watched constantly by watching back. An engaging, alarming, and enlightening book, one that is certain to be among the most important books on surveillance in the twenty-first century.

Stacy Takacs

Lewis is adept at making complex philosophical, historical, and sociological arguments comprehensible to the lay person, and he brings in a range of useful cultural references to provide a broader perspective on contemporary debates. The book is both sophisticated and accessible—a rare combination.

Torin Monahan

This incredibly compelling book provides a thoughtful and engaging exploration of the affective dimensions of contemporary surveillance. It is hard to think of another book that introduces readers to surveillance through the lenses of biography, ethnography, and critical cultural inquiry. The writing is witty and colorful, accessible while communicating many profound insights.

Cory Doctorow

A sprightly tour down some of the surveillance society’s most claustrophobic corridors.

Editorial Reviews

06/26/2017
American studies scholar Lewis (Navajo Talking Picture) offers a wide-ranging set of approaches to assessing the pervasive yet often subtle consequences of modern surveillance technologies in the United States and the West more generally. Pitching his analysis to a general reader, the author draws on popular culture as well as a growing body of scholarship and the details of his own biography to broaden and deepen our appreciation of surveillance’s psychological and social impact. Lewis thus takes in not only government and corporate activities but other forms of surveillance. These include “domestic surveillance,” or the highly gendered and class-inflected systems of supervision and control experienced in childhood, and the “playful surveillance” of online games and other commercial gadgetry conducted in the name of pleasure and social connection. Adding nuance to this generally bleak picture of a all-encompassing denial of privacy, Lewis acknowledges certain (potentially) liberating aspects of the latter category of surveillance, which he dubs “the Funopticon,” after the panopticon, an 18th-century plan for mass surveillance. Not every chapter is equally original or insightful, but this book contributes a clear formulation of key issues at stake while reminding us that technological advances unaccompanied by critical reflection and public discussion risk what Thoreau—one of Lewis’s political and philosophical touchstones—called “but improved means to an unimproved end.” (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

[A] warmly conversational treatment that is also searching and literate.

Survival

Under Surveillance takes a compelling, and very chilling, look at the changes in our culture since 9/11 . . . Lewis examines the issue from a multiplicity of angles, all of which are worth giving deeper thought.

Mandatory

[An] accessible, ruminative, anxiety-ridden new book on American surveillance culture.

Texas Observer

2017-08-29
An academic consideration of the cultural meanings behind increasing surveillance and post-9/11 securitization.Lewis (American Studies/Univ. of Texas; Navajo Talking Picture: Cinema on Native Ground, 2012, etc.) sets out "to ask difficult questions about the weirdness and weariness of living under the blanket of surveillance technology." He is clearly fascinated by its pervasiveness, and he argues that the traditional suspicion of surveillance ought to be reconsidered, that "the sustained and subtle impact of surveillance" adds richness of experience and even "fun" to our lives. Lewis explores these concepts in six long chapters, wide-ranging in topicality, from the overall expansion of CCTV networks to the resonance of Thoreau's ideas within today's surveillance state. He first establishes the emotional effect of overlapping types of surveillance, now integrated into our lives in venues ranging from nanny-cams to documented police shootings. "Surveillance conducted by citizens, or sousveillance, is supposed to shield us from the worst abuses of the state," he writes. In the aptly named "Welcome to the Funopticon," Lewis discusses the classic surveillance literature of George Orwell and Jeremy Bentham alongside his thesis that the provocative, public nature of surveillance is enriching us, noting, "what has not been fully understood is how much pleasure is driving this expansion of surveillance into our daily lives." Elsewhere, the author contrasts the solemnity of the 9/11 memorial with the frenetic civic paranoia the attack unloosed, exemplified by the phenomenon of "sacred security" companies. These organizations fortify conservative evangelical Christian churches against doomsday scenarios, and they are experiencing rapid growth, like all connected with the surveillance industry. Lewis can write perceptively and with power, as in an autobiographical section reflecting on the social surveillance of his hardscrabble 1970s suburban childhood, but he also falls back on a synthesis of scholarly reading and theory that may not fully engage lay readers, in terms of current controversies and real-world relevance. Will appeal to sociologists and students of cultural studies and behaviors.

Kirkus Reviews