Surveillance Society

David Lyon is Professor of Sociology at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He has held visiting positions at the University of Leeds, UK; Calvin College, USA; Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada; Monash University, Australia; Auckland University, New Zealand; the National University of Singapore; the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France; and the University of Tokyo, Japan. His work has been translated into over ten languages, and includes The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society (1994), and Postmodernity 2nd Edition (1999) also published by Open University Press.

Surveillance Society takes a post-privacy approach to surveillance with a fresh look at the relations between technology and society. Personal data is collected from us all the time, whether we know it or not, through identity numbers, camera images, or increasingly by other means such as fingerprint and retinal scans. This book examines the constant computer-based scrutiny of ordinary daily life for citizens and consumers as they participate in contemporary societies. It argues that to understand what is happening we have to go beyond Orwellian alarms and cries for more privacy to see how such surveillance also reinforces divisions by sorting people into social categories. The issues spill over narrow policy and legal boundaries to generate responses at several levels including local consumer groups, internet activism, and international social movements. In this fascinating study, sociologies of new technology and social theories of surveillance are illustrated with examples from North America, Europe, and Pacific Asia.

Series editor's forewordPreface and acknowledgementsIntroduction