4 hours per week
The course will employ a number of instructional methods to accomplish its objectives, including some or all of the following:
- small and large group discussions
- audio-visual materials
- seminar presentations
- lectures (including guest lectures)
- Introduction: Social Control and Surveillance within Sociology
- Classical Sociological Theories of Social Control
- Contemporary Sociological Theories of Social Control: Governance, governmentality and the Foucault Effect
- State Institutions and Social Control (e.g. Prison Industrial Complex, Psychiatric Hospitals, etc.)
- Social Inequality, Class and Social Control
- Intersectional Approaches to Social Control (e.g. race, gender, disability)
- Sociological Theories of Surveillance
- Modalities of Risk and the Risk Society
- Social Inequality and the Surveillance Society
- Hyper-capitalism, Globalization and Consumer Surveillance
- Reflexive Modernity, Citizenship and New Media
- Surveillance, Technology, and the Military
- Social Movements, Power and Resistance in an Era of Surveillance
By the end of the course, successful students should be able to:
- Explain foundational and contemporary issues in the sociological study of social control;
- Locate the emergence of surveillance studies as a field of inquiry within sociology;
- Interpret key sociological theories within contemporary sociological scholarship on social control and surveillance, such as governmentality, risk society, surveillance society;
- Examine key areas of scholarship, such as late-modernity, subjectivity, advanced capitalism, prison industrial complex, neoliberalism, globalization, individualization, reflexive modernization;
- Critique and identify forms of social control and surveillance that impact the lives of individuals, as well as the structure of contemporary societies.
Evaluation will be carried out in accordance with Douglas College policy and will include both formative and summative components. Specific evaluation criteria will be provided by the instructor at the beginning of the semester.
Instructors may use a student’s record of attendance and/or level of active participation in the course as part of the student’s graded performance. Where this occurs, expectations and grade calculations regarding class attendance and participation will be clearly defined in the Instructor Course Outline.
Evaluation will be based on some or all of the following:
- Participating in class discussion
- Essays
- Oral presentations (individual and/or group)
- Written exams
A sample grade breakdown for this course might be as follows:
Participation - 10%
Midterm Exam - 15%
Research Paper - 30%
Seminar Presentation - 20%
Critical Media Analysis - 10%
Final Exam - 15%
Students may conduct research with human participants as part of their coursework in this class. Instructors for the course are responsible for ensuring that student research projects comply with College policies on ethical conduct for research involving humans.
Below is a sample text that could be used in this course:
Norris, Clive and Dean Wilson (editors). (2017). Surveillance, Crime and Social Control. New York: Routledge.
Below is a list of relevant texts, including academic articles and books, that could be used to design a course reader.
Allen, Theodore. (2012). The Invention of the White Race: Volume 1, Racial Oppression and Social Control. London: New Left Books.
Beck, Ulrich. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.
Dubrofsky, Rachel and Shoshana Amielle Magnet. (2015). Feminist Surveillance Studies. Duke University Press.
Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (eds.). (1991). The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. University of Chicago Press.
Giddens, Anthony. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford University Press.
Hannah-Moffat, Kelly and Pat O'Malley. (2007). Gendered Risks. New York: Routledge-Cavendish.
Lyon, David. (2001). Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life. Open University Press.
Lyon, David. (2012). Liquid Surveillance: A Conversation. Polity Press.
Lyon, David. (2015). Surveillance After Snowden. Polity Press.
Marr Maria, Sunaina. (2016). The 9/11 Generation: Youth, Rights, and Solidarity in the War on Terror. New York: New York University Press.
Saltes, Natasha. (2013). 'Abnormal' Bodies on the Borders of Inclusion: Biopolitics and the Paradox of Disability Surveillance. Surveillance & Society, 11(1/2), pp. 55-73.
van der Vlist, Fernando. (2017). Counter-Mapping Surveillance: A Critical Cartography of Mass Surveillance Technology After Snowden. Surveillance & Society, 15(1), pp. 137-157.
Wills, Jocelyn. (2017). Tug of War: Surveillance Capitalism, Military Contracting, and the Rise of the Security State. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
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