Windows into the Soul Surveillance and Society in an Age of High Technology

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Synopsis

We live in an age saturated with surveillance. Our personal and public lives are increasingly on display for governments, merchants, employers, hackers—and the merely curious—to see. In Windows into the Soul, Gary T. Marx, a central figure in the rapidly expanding field of surveillance studies, argues that surveillance itself is neither good nor bad, but that context and comportment make it so.

In this landmark book, Marx sums up a lifetime of work on issues of surveillance and social control by disentangling and parsing the empirical richness of watching and being watched. Using fictional narratives as well as the findings of social science, Marx draws on decades of studies of covert policing, computer profiling, location and work monitoring, drug testing, caller identification, and much more, Marx gives us a conceptual language to understand the new realities and his work clearly emphasizes the paradoxes, trade-offs, and confusion enveloping the field. Windows into the Soul shows how surveillance can penetrate our social and personal lives in profound, and sometimes harrowing, ways. Ultimately, Marx argues, recognizing complexity and asking the right questions is essential to bringing light and accountability to the darker, more iniquitous corners of our emerging surveillance society.

For more information, please see www.garymarx.net.

Book details

Author:
Gary T. Marx
ISBN:
9780226286075
Related ISBNs:
9780226285887, 9780226285917
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Pages:
400
Reading age:
Not specified
Includes images:
No
Date of addition:
2021-01-05
Usage restrictions:
Copyright
Copyright date:
2016
Copyright by:
N/A 
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Categories:
Law, Legal Issues and Ethics, Nonfiction, Politics and Government, Social Studies, Sociology