DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 4

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Digital Culture and Sociology

• People Online

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about today

• Introduction to Foucault
• Winokur, Mark. 2003. "The Ambiguous Panopticon
  Foucault and the Codes of Cyberspace".
• Lunn, Robert J. Suman, Michael W. 2002.
  Experience and Trust in Online Shopping.
• Sveningsson, Malin. 2002. Cyberlove Creating
  Romantic Relationships on the Net.

break
Foucault
?
texts
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(No Transcript)
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Main Works

• Madness and Civilization A History of Insanity
  in the Age of Reason (1961)
• Construction of the category of madness and
  mad, psychiatry to correct and normalize.
  Power.
• The Birth of the Clinic An Archeology of medical
  perception (1963)
• Medical academic discourse, humans as object for
  knowledge.

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Main Works II

• The Order of Things (Les Mots et les Choses) 1966
• Episteme patterns of knowledge, each time has
  its historicity, context important, knowledge not
  universal, discontinuity.
• Man as subject is a construction, controversy.
• The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969)
• Humans are objects of knowledge, new rationality,
  new subjectivity. Research into practise.

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Main Works III

• Discipline and Punish The Birth of the Prison
  (1975)
• Inspired by Bentham (1791)
• Prison changes the prisoner. Prison an extreme
  manifestation of a capitalist tool.
• Panopticon everywhere (military, school, work),
  discipline can have positive effect.

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THE SYSTEM IS SIMPLE FROM THE CENTRAL TOWER THE
GUARDIAN CAN SEE ALL OF THE PRISONERS AT ANY
TIME. THE PRISONERS HOWEVER CANNOT SEE THE
GUARDIAN FROM THEIR CELLS. THUS, THEY NEVER KNOW
IF THEY ARE BEING WATCHED OR NOT. AS A RESULT
THEY GET PARANOID AND DISCIPLINE THEMSELVES. OF
COURSE PRISONERS ARE ISOLATED FROM ONE ANOTHER SO
AS TO MAXIMIZE THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT. THE
PANOPTICAL TECHNIQUE IS WIDELY USED IN BABYLON
RANDOM POLICE CONTROL, REPRESSION, AND
CONSTITUTION OF CRIMINAL RECORDS FOR MINOR
OFFENCE, ARE THE TYPE OF STRATEGIES USED ON A
DAILY BASIS IN LIBERAL COUNTRIES TO MAINTAIN
"SOCIAL ORDER", THAT IS, THE STATUS QUO
http//www.urbanology.org/ghettospaces/panopticon.
html
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Main Works IV

• The History of Sexuality (3 vols. 1976-1984)
• Sex as art, as knowledge/power.
• Actors have more action possibilities through
  reflection

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Summary

• Keywords power, knowledge, the subject.
• Power
• A creative force in society, tension everywhere,
  not only institutions
• Subject (everything comes together)
• The individual is subject to institutions of
  power, such as governments, and to discourses,
  such as theories of the person. Subjectivity was
  administered through discourses, including those
  that investigated what it meant to be human
  (science) and what it meant to be social
  (government). It is these that discipline
  subjects, making them manageable, knowable and
  restrainable.
• Themes archaeology, discipline, punishment,
  body, sexuality, panopticon, state

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Winokur the ambiguous panopticon

• Questions about the text?
• Discuss why is the idea of panopticon attractive
  to us digital culture students?
• Discuss is there a connection to what real
  people do online?

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Internet as Panoptic?

• Does it serve social control? Power,
  internalization etc. How is this answered in the
  article?
• Internet as modality and medium at the same time
  (my page 6) Different kind of gazes / surfers

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Are they panoptic?

• GAZE / -
• SPACE / -
• AUTHORITY
• TOTALITY
• DISCOURSE / -

Perfect panopticism, literal. Only in mind not
body. We are all oppressive.
The level of code question determines the
conclusion. Unfocused, confusing.
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Method qualitative vs. quantitative

• Shopping vs. Cyberlove
• How expected/predictable were the results? Did
  you learn anything new?
• What results do you trust more?
• What results do you think are more useful?
  (Useful for what?)
• What results can be generalized more?

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Cyberlove

• Method Qualitative Ethics of names, sampling,
  what is her goal (p. 49). Vagueness (54),
  speculation (62), trust subjects? (62) what
  people dont say (69)
• Theme Relation to Panopticon
• Theme Relation to Everyday Life theme
• Theme Relation to Digital Borderlands
  virtuality.
• Do New Media change relationships?
• What do you think of her conclusions?

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Online Shopping

• Method 45 are unhappy with your website.
  Expensive and difficult.
• Extremely detailed methodology section, requires
  training, expectations.
• Steps Sampling, data collection, analysis,
  results.
• We dont know how this happens, why. Examples of
  dump categories (559), strange results (567,
  569), location not important? (570)
• Cultural aspects (USA) more difficult to isolate
• Themes are the questions interesting?
• Conclusions the single most important factor
  predicting Internet shopping behavior is
  experience (571), they try to map the
  multidimensional concept.
• But why/when/how do people take the leap?