The Surveillance-Industrial Complex by Kirstie Ball Laureen Snider

Author:Kirstie Ball, Laureen Snider [Kirstie Ball, Laureen Snider]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136206979
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 18182515
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

7 Collaborative surveillance

Configuring contemporary marketing practice

Jason Pridmore

Introduction

The growth of surveillance studies within multiple disciplines and its increasing importance in policy-making and governance has occurred to some degree as a function of the concerted efforts by researchers in the field. However, at times, the singularity of the concept of surveillance and its ever-expanding role and importance as that which ties diverse interests together has overshadowed the multiplicity and differentiation of surveillance practices. The degree to which the CCTV practices of police agencies are comparable to social networking ‘surveillance’ for instance, or to national ID cards, workplace monitoring, or electronic patient records — is not always apparent.

The notion that we can speak of ‘a’ or ‘the’ political economy of surveillance is a misnomer; in fact we must speak of political economies. This chapter focuses on one such economy, the development of forms of surveillance that are occurring in the commercial sector by and through marketing practices. It does so by seeing marketing as performative, in that it brings into existence a form of surveillance that is temporal in nature, contingent upon changes in daily practices of consumption and commercial interests. This surveillance is increasingly participatory, ever more reliant upon consumers to produce relevant data and information, and consumer feedback to revise and alter marketing techniques. While these ever-changing practices are embedded in what can be called the ‘personal information economy’, much of what occurs in these contexts blurs the ‘natural’ boundaries between the surveilled and the surveillors. In this domain it makes little sense to maintain a one-sided focus on the power of one actor over another (e.g. marketing machinations over consumer ‘dupes’) or focus upon possibilities of ‘resistance’ (e.g. consumer boycotts and advocacy practices). Instead, marketing is performed and configured by drawing consumers into a series of interrelated ‘commercial’ activities. The interactions between corporations and consumers, given the emphasis on relationship marketing and the rise of ‘prosumption’, are performed as relational, experimental and participatory, all of which suggests we are seeing a collaborative surveillance with specific implications for consumers, corporations and market practices.

This chapter discusses collaborative surveillance as based on shifts in marketing practice, specifically the orientation of corporations towards relationship marketing and the advent of ‘prosumption.’ Examining current practices in one exemplary form of marketing, that of loyalty marketing, demonstrates how marketing is configured through processes of calculation, ‘qualculation’ and integration. The performative nature of consumer surveillance constructs and sustains these practices through the development of collaborative forms of surveillance, which entails a complex set of relations between consumers as surveilled subjects and corporate practices of surveillance.

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