The Relationship Of Consumption To Social Change In Relation To Discipline And Surveillance.

Introduction.
Surveillance technologies and techniques for discipline of both workforce and the general public alike have developed along with capitalist industrial society. But more recently; with shifts from paper -based to electronic information systems, the advancement of such technologies has accelerated rapidly. The speed and breadth of information-collection is now such that much of our lives, and particularly our economic behaviour as consumers, is under surveillance. Many sociologists and others have described this as part of a process of increasing privatisation of public space, a process which is not only occurring in cyberspace but also in physical spaces like exclusive shopping and residential developments which define acceptable behaviour and bar those deemed inappropriate. The creation of increasingly individualised databases similarly allows ever greater scope for black-listing and exclusion on the one hand, and targeted marketing tailored to meet the 'desires ' of highly-specific consumer groups and individuals on the other.
The development of organised, privatised and disciplined public spaces and categorical (or even individualised) data-analysis systems have prompted many to ponder their affects on social relations, and particularly the extent to which both behaviour is moderated, and people are (re)categorised in ways that affects their lives. The ramifications of these changes also adds a new dimension to the Structure/Agency debate, in this case specifically surrounding ideas of the 'free consumer ' and consumer authority versus state obedience and capitalist manipulation and control.


A brief look into The Scope of Contemporary Information Systems.
Much of our lives, especially the routine financial transactions that we make on a day to day basis, are tracked and recorded by a vast array of digital technological devices and techniques.
One of the most striking changes in very recent modern life is the introduction of Closed Circuit Television Vision (CCTV) systems to virtually every town and city in Britain. Once CCTV cameras became regular features in various urban centres, discourses surrounding fear of crime and safety (promoted by television crime-programs based on video footage of real crimes) seem to have caused great calls for their expansion, resulting in an almost ubiquitous CCTV presence in such places. Such camera networks were, of course, previously the domain of private companies and shops, where they had been introduced for crime prevention, detection and more recently also for the observation of shoppers' habits, in attempts to understand the psychology of shopping so as to plan store layouts to manipulate behaviour and maximise sales.
As well as the physical observation of customers, details of their spending habits are left behind them through the digitalised transactions made with credit cards, debit cards, 'loyalty' store cards, and increasingly; the more thoroughly and personally detailed 'smart-cards'. The rise in the use of the internet, and particularly internet shopping has provided another useful source of information for businesses. On-line shoppers normally have to give companies various details before they can buy including their e-mail addresses, home addresses, details of some kind of bank card, a customer reference number and often a brief outline of their personal profile. Many of these details relate to each individual customer, and can be used (not only for customer security, but also) to direct marketing strategies at consumer groups and individuals.
'Caller I.D.' has now become another feature of many people's everyday life. Often seen largely as being for the convenience of the customers of modern telephone companies, it is used by many businesses, small and large, to build up lists of people who have shown interest enough to ring them and who may therefore be potential customers; either their own, or those of associated companies. Indeed, 'caller I.D.' lists form just one small part of a whole body of lists (and potential lists) that can be compiled from a host of sources including all those so-far mentioned. When the details of many such lists have been aggregated, they can be combined to form highly detailed profiles of people, their personal spending habits, details of where they travel to, what they do for leisure and often more personal details about not only their age, sex and so on but also their expectations, intentions and fears compiled from customer surveys.
The amalgamation of these sorts of lists are used in the creation of major computerised data-bases, some of which are of colossal scale. David Lyon gives the example of an English direct-mail company whose database is large enough for comparison with the Police National Computer, holding details, including personal profiles and financial information, of over 43 million people (Lyon, 1994: 141). Such lists have become hot property , being sold and rented by companies including specific list-brokers for their potential in precise customer targeting(Gandy, 1995: 38), for example in the 'personalised' marketing campaigns of direct ('junk') mail (Lyon, Op. Cit.).


Information; Life-Chances, Social Status and the Notion of the 'Free Consumer'.
So far, many people may see the collating of masses of consumer information as something to be welcomed. It is often indeed taken to be a forward step in the discourse of consumer choice. After all, giving some details to a company often means you will be informed about, and offered more of the kinds of things you have expressed an interest in. But some have identified a darker side to the information age.
For one thing, the notion of 'free' consumer choice hides the extent for example, to which prices of basic services may be driven up under the guise of increased choice (ibid: 154). Perhaps more importantly, the information that offers some people credit, leaves others 'blacklisted' and labelled 'undesirable' (ibid) through data held on them (which may just be the financial history based on their address). This has knock-on consequences which might include an increased desirability of certain kinds of homes and residential areas over others, thereby exacerbating problems of poverty associated with them. Thus we find that the expanded information era and knowledge itself, is found to be linked to indices of social standing when we compare those who possess the appropriate consumer records with those whose records are either deemed inappropriate, or those without records at all. This is but one example in which the population can be seen as being divided into 'haves ' and 'have-nots '.
Zygmunt Bauman distinguishes between two categories of people that have resulted from the processes of modernity (and post-modernity); the seduced and the repressed (Bauman, 1987). The 'seduced ' seem at first to be superficially analogous to 'the winners' of capitalist industrialisation, or Marx's Bourgeoisie in his class analysis of societal power. But Bauman's seduced, as well as being a product of consumer society, are also its victims to the extent that they have become dependent on consumption and consumer culture. For Bauman, Identity-creation and people's need to find themselves through consumption have inextricably tied 'the seduced' into endless cycles of consumption of 'non-essential' (in purely utilitarian terms, though now essential for many in terms of self-expression and identity in contemporary society) goods, because for him:
'Individual needs of personal autonomy, self-definition, authentic life or personal perfection are all translated into the needs to possess, and consume, market-offered goods.' (Ibid: 189).
'The repressed' are subject to disciplinary state control, they are those who are denied access to the full spectrum of perceived 'choice' offered in consumer culture and all that it offers in terms of self-identity. There are though, those who think that Bauman's concept here is, to some extent, misdirected. Alan Warde for instance, before going on to criticise him, initially summarises Bauman's conception of the problem of self-identity thus:
'...modernity, or post-modernity, is seen (by Bauman) to demand that individuals construct their own selves. No longer are people placed in society by way of their lineage, caste or class, but each must invent and consciously create a personal identity. This construction of self involves, in great part, appropriate consumer behaviour.' (Warde, 1994: 62).
Warde then claims that many theorists of consumption, as with Bauman himself, have consistently overplayed the part played by the establishment and pursuit of self-identity (ibid: 65). Warde draws on Bourdieu's theory of 'Distinction', where consumption is seen as being used in the acquisition and display of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1989) explaining that this competitive form of consumption can thus be said to be implicated as '...a source of divisiveness, a basis for conflict and exclusion ' (Ward, Op. Cit.). Ward states that Bauman understates the degree to which consumption practices are hierarchical and socialised while overplaying the extent to which society (as a consumer society) is uniform and individualistic (ibid: 71). Ward asserts that those in Bauman's 'repressed' category '...might be better understood simply as the poor ' (1994: 61 Emphasis added) , claiming that Bauman's labelling of the poor as 'repressed' '...shifts the blame from market to state '(ibid: 71) for present inequalities, and that '...what the poor need most is more money, and no institution except the state is remotely likely to organise systematically the meeting of such a need. '(ibid).
But for the purposes of this discussion, whether it is Bauman or Warde who have made the more accurate assessment; when it comes to the nature of the relationship between the processes of modernity (and post-modernity) and consumption, the main point to bear in mind is that both conceptions of this relationship point to a situation in which consumer-society exacerbates divisions in society (be they between rich and poor, or 'seduced' and 'repressed') and the acceleration of the scope of information technology is only likely to increase the effectiveness of the processes of consumerism and thus further enhance such divisions, and affect people's life-chances.


Changes in Information Technology in Industrial Society.
Of course, the collection and processing of data for the advancement of state, businesses and the capitalist system generally, is no new thing. Lyon reminds us that:
'...while the scale and pervasiveness of contemporary surveillance would be impossible without computer-power, computers have not created the situation that the citizens of the advanced societies find themselves in today. We were "data-subjects" long before any supposed technical revolution occurred. ' (Lyon, 1994: 41).
The primary storage medium for data in the pre-digital era was paper, processed, as well as stored, through systems based on file-keeping. In his account of modernity, Weber identifies increasing rationalisation and bureaucracy as playing a central role through the period of industrial expansion and in the development of the modern economy. This rationalisation includes the burgeoning of systematic hierarchies in the workplace (and elsewhere) where the growing numbers of officials working in offices (that is; working with data) are the subject of rationalised and disciplined procedures (Weber, 1978: 217-26). The emphasis, as far as the official (or bureaucrat) is concerned, is on adherence to the (rational) rules in an ordered and disciplined acceptance of hierarchy administered through a chain of command (ibid). Christopher Dandeker emphasises the importance of Weber's ideas in the bureaucratic use of information, filing and surveillance:
'The most important consequence of rational officialdom is that a director of a bureaucracy can predict, with great certainty, that his or her commands will be implemented through the chain of command, and this to a historically unprecedented extent. Moreover these activities will be based on rational calculations stemming from the institutionalisation of the knowledge stored in official files. For Weber, then, rational administration is a fusion of knowledge and discipline.' (Dandaker, 1990: 10, Original Emphasis).
Weber compares rationalised business organisations to the ordered and systematic character of the modern nation state (ibid):
'...The bureaucracy is charged with implementing ...legal norms (of the state) over the state's territory and population. This activity involves a permanent and continuous exercise of surveillance.' (ibid).
The state's operation of order and discipline (including military defence) is thus exorcised through the ordered processing and rationalisation of knowledge, by data-collection (surveillance procedures), in much the same way as private companies and the capitalist system in general operates upon workers and consumers, in order to maximise economic growth. Such bureaucratic systems of command in the economic sphere are likely to favour the power of the employer over employee (ibid: 158) through the hierarchical nature of the system, and the fact that all data (what might be thought of as information-capital ) is stored and controlled by the company.
Technological advances in the office (and by which we can think of the rationalised bureaucratic system generally) changed and helped to facilitate capitalist expansion. The introduction of the telephone for example, has been sited as a critical development in the advancement of managerial control through its use in fast inter-departmental and cross-geographical communication (see Hannah, 1976 cited in ibid: 173). Between the two world wars, a rapid increase in the use of office machines like typewriters, copiers and later computerised technologies accelerated information gathering and, according to Dandeker, 'cheapened ' its processing (Dandeker, Op. Cit.: 173-4), tacitly easing any problems relating to the command and control ethos and increasing the knowledge-capacity of organisations (ibid: 197).
The 1980's and the influence of 'New Right' thinking in the Reaganite/Thatcherite era saw a double-edged promotion of new surveillance technologies (Lyon, 1994: 54); conversely promoting both a strong, secure (centralised ) state and technological use in 'free enterprise' encouraging decentralised control of surveillance. Decentralisation of information control has since become a major topic surrounding the dramatic rise to prominence of the internet and associated digital-communication technologies in the 1990's and 2000's.

Consumer Authority; Reality or Illusion?
The internet , with its associated discourses of decentralisation and 'freedom of speech ' and action, once again brings up the debate about consumer authority. For some, the internet represents a new hope in facilitating freedom of expression for example, in the opportunity to publish whatever one chooses for its unleashing to (potential) view by the rest of the world, or at least for those in it who can afford, or have access to, the appropriate technology. This new technology is even seen as a force for subversive political expression and action characterised, for instance, by large-scale and cross national anti-capitalist demonstrations that have even been organised and co-ordinated largely over the World-Wide-Web.
While the unregulated aspect of the internet gives rise to the opportunity for free expression, it can just as easily be seen as a force for maintaining the status quo. After all, the greatest opportunity for attracting (virtual) visitors to web-sites lies with large companies who can afford the most advertising space with the 'traditional' media. The experience of internet shopping, as mentioned earlier, requires the imparting of personal information, often quite detailed, which can then be used for the finessing of companies' targeted marketing strategies. Through the internet, large companies are able to both broaden the reach, and deepen the penetration of markets through increased and cross-referenced (with other commercial sources of data) knowledge about customers, and thus increase businesses' opportunities to anticipate, or even moderate customers' (spending) habits.
The idea that public behaviour might be moderated or even controlled by the all-pervading presence of data-collecting technology, is perhaps best expressed by Foucault (1979) in his use of Bentham's prison design as a metaphor for society (ibid). Bentham's design was based on the principal of the Panopticon , meaning an 'all seeing' system through which the behaviour of prisoners is moderated by the fact that the prison is designed in such a way as to allow for a guard's-eye-view into every cell. The main principal for said design is not that the guard is watching the prisoners at all times, so much as the prisoner's behaviour is self adjusted to the possibility that at any one time, they could be being watched, 'the asymmetrical gaze ' as Lyon put it (1994: 65) '...created uncertainty which in turn produced surrender ' (ibid, emphasis added). Foucault makes us think about comparisons between the prisoner's moderated behaviour in the context of this panoptic power, with moderation of the public given a panoptic society (Foucault, 1979).
Lyon asks whether modern surveillance can be said to add up to panoptic power (ibid: 72) before going on to propose that in order for this to be the case, the panoptic presence must for one thing, be spread over different social spheres (ibid). Oscar H. Gandy seems to provide something of an answer in his framing of the problems of privacy in terms of discrimination, and the 'panoptic sort ' as a mechanism for the 'social construction of difference ' (Gandy, 1995: 37-8):
'The panoptic sort, as a "difference engine" in support of rationalisation and efficiency, is not limited to any single sphere of our existence. Personal information is used to determine our life chances in our roles as citizens as well as in our lives as employees and consumers. Techniques developed in one sphere migrate rapidly into use in other spheres.' (ibid, emphasis added).
Gandy points to the way that surveillance of employees by companies has not only become more sophisticated, but that this is increasingly being extended to cover activities of employees outside working hours, in concerns over health-affecting interests and so on (ibid: 37). The panoptic sort categorises people into new groups, the membership of which affects their life-chances, for instance when groups are mapped geographically, and then an entire community is labelled in a way which excludes them from various services and opportunities (including consumption-based opportunities and financial services) such as the example given by Gandy where residential communities can be labelled as 'deadbeats' (ibid: 42). Newly defined problems, as well as new technologies, may increase the perceived needs for and scope of, surveillance, for instance in the case of medical status (Ibid: 43).
Perhaps Gandy's most important point is his assertion that one consequence of surveillance society, and one which differentiates itself from better-known forms of discrimination; is that the panoptic sort creates situations in which groups may be entirely unaware of their membership of a (repressed) group, and furthermore, may be unaware of even the variables that determine their inclusion in the group:
'...when the groups to which people are assigned are the products of multivariate clustering techniques, where the relevant variables number in the hundreds, and the contribution of each variable is indicated by a single coefficient reflecting all the other variables held constant statistically, it is impossible for the individual to understand how to act to modify his or her status.' (ibid).
Unlike many other types of discrimination, such groups may then be unable to develop a political awareness of their plight , and so fail to transform consciousness of this into political action, thus working as a mechanism in which prevailing capitalist hierarchies are maintained.




Changes in Consumer Culture and Privatisation of Physical Space.
High-street shopping has recently undergone significant change. Indeed, part of that change is involved in its relative removal from the high street to enclosed, indoor centres where entire shopping environments are privately owned and controlled. This relatively new kind of 'shopping experience ' often centers around the better known, wealthy, high-fashion, branded, elite stores. Elitism in fact forms an important element in this kind of consumption. Many of these centers are 'out of town ' and thus inaccessible, or at least difficult to get to, for those without cars. Private ownership means that not only the stores, but the spaces in-between them are under strict order and control by the owning body, through teams of security guards and CCTV. Anyone deemed inappropriate for whatever reason (and especially if they also look as if they are unable to afford the commodities on offer) may be expelled from such complexes.
Some see benefits to to the consumer from such highly policed and controlled environments. Indoor shopping centres allow people to feel protected ; both from the weather, and from fear of physical attack. Such places are, for example, often particularly cited as being safe places for women to shop. But here there is an extent to which surveillance society is using people, and particularly women and other groups constructed as 'vulnerable', in making them more dependent , through fear, on such highly ordered environments. In this way, economic power is therefore further shifted in favour of the most powerful multinational corporations ; the businesses that can afford to buy their position in such centres.
The protection and exclusivity of such shopping centres once again promotes the division of people into groups as either those included or excluded. Poorer sections of the population increasingly become geographically defined by different geographic zones in a de facto (if not overt) segregation. Mike Davis's account of 'Fortress L.A.' (Davis, 1998: 223-263) may provide a particularly explicit account of this, but the gradual extinction of public places (ibid: 260) continues discernibly in the towns and cities of Western nations.
An anti-surveillance organisation which describes itself as extolling the 'politics against the abolition of public freedom ' ('Save The Resistance!', 2000) highlights the extent to which society has become obsessed with security, claiming that 'police logic' is becoming a dominant ideology (ibid):
'...society is getting into a state of continued obsession with security, as only the massive presence of repression creates a feeling of being threatened in the public opinion by those others (including asylum seekers and anarchists) in society.'(Ibid, emphasis added).
The enclosed shopping arena provides a further blow to opportunities for free political expression. Protests that might be allowed in the public high street, will not be tolerated in the private shopping mall:
'...if resistance can't be organised, repression and the persecution of every political and cultural opposition will soon dominate life. The world of the future will then be an image of a political and cultural wasteland.' (Ibid).
Thus there may be reason to fear that a surveillance and security-obsessed culture could ultimately lead to kind of politically-flattened world in which all potential for political opposition is absorbed by the prevailing culture, while maintaining an outward ethos of political freedom and openness, as expressed in discourses of the 'free consumer' (See Marcuse's 'One-Dimensional Man ', 1964 for a similar hypothesis):
'...in the conscience of the majority of people there is no resistance against the limitations. On the contrary, people demand more "peace", order and security which serves the reason for every tightening of the measures.'
'....it is impossible to deny the tendency of a wide-spread approval of more repression.' ('Save The Resistance', Op. Cit.).


Conclusion.

Surveillance as a rationalising mechanism for the ordered pursuit of economic interests has been with us throughout industrial history. The rise of computerised technology however, and with it the ability to process vast amounts of information quickly and easily, has enabled public (consumer) surveillance to be enacted on unprecedented levels. The speed and scope of this technology has also allowed data to be used in innovative, cross-cutting ways that allow the building of extensive and penetrating databases through which people are categorised and defined. Consumers are now precisely targeted, and their spending behaviour (including their general, consumer 'lifestyle' behaviour) is recorded and analysed. The use of this data and these new definitions allows the further enhancement of the economic power of the largest corporations, and the capitalist system generally.
Worryingly, this takes place within the context of widely-held confidence in the position of the 'autonomous consumer ' through discourses of consumer-sovereignty or consumer-rights. Thus developments that increase efficiency in surveillance are frequently applauded and welcomed as offering 'more choice ' or 'greater safety ' to the shopper.
Private space, especially that largely owned and controlled by economic interests, and in both the physical and virtual senses of the term, have increasingly and systematically replaced public space. In the context of this new era of a particularly heightened surveillance, and discipline culture, this has exacerbated the rift between relatively elite groups and those largely excluded from the norms of elite public existence. Worse still, the excluded and repressed seem to be in an even worse position than before in being able to identify the precise nature of their own exclusion.

3958 Words.

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Internet Sources:

Save The Resistance!, It is never wrong to do the right thing - Against a Surveillance Society and Obsession With Security;http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/bgr/kampagne/save/engl.htm; 05/12/00.