Banopticon

Last updated

The Banopticon (sometimes written as Ban-opticon) is a term coined by Paris School academic Didier Bigo used within an International Political Sociology approach to security studies to describe a situation where profiling technologies are used to determine whom to place under surveillance. [1] The term, which is a portmanteau word consisting of ban and panopticon , takes its name from Michel Foucault's interpretation of the panopticon as used in Discipline and Punish and the notion of ban from international relations [2] to describe a situation where observation is used as a disciplinary tool, namely by creating profiles for people and using databases to determine whether or not a person should be granted the right to move freely. [3] According to Bigo, the banopticon is said to have contributed towards the securitization of migration in Europe.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Panopticon</span> Prison design

The panopticon is a design of institutional building with an inbuilt system of control, originated by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single security guard, without the inmates knowing whether they are being watched.

The concept of a carceral archipelago was first used by the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault in his 1975 publication, Surveiller et Punir, to describe the modern penal system of the 1970s, embodied by the well-known penal institution at Mettray in France. The phrase combines the adjective "carceral", which means that which is related to jail or prison, with archipelago—a group of islands. Foucault referred to the "island" units of the "archipelago" as a metaphor for the mechanisms, technologies, knowledge systems and networks related to a carceral continuum. The 1973 English publication of the book by Solzhenitsyn called The Gulag Archipelago referred to the forced labor camps and prisons that composed the sprawling carceral network of the Soviet Gulag.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sousveillance</span> Recording of an activity by a participant

Sousveillance is the recording of an activity by a member of the public, rather than a person or organisation in authority, typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies. The term, coined by Steve Mann, stems from the contrasting French words sur, meaning "above", and sous, meaning "below", i.e. "surveillance" denotes the "eye-in-the-sky" watching from above, whereas "sousveillance" denotes bring the means of observation down to human level, either physically or hierarchically.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social structure</span> Sociological classification of human societies according to their social characteristics

In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings, or purposes. Examples of social structure include family, religion, law, economy, and class. It contrasts with "social system", which refers to the parent structure in which these various structures are embedded. Thus, social structures significantly influence larger systems, such as economic systems, legal systems, political systems, cultural systems, etc. Social structure can also be said to be the framework upon which a society is established. It determines the norms and patterns of relations between the various institutions of the society.

Governmentality is a concept first developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in the later years of his life, roughly between 1977 and his death in 1984, particularly in his lectures at the Collège de France during this time.

<i>Discipline and Punish</i> 1975 book by Michel Foucault

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a 1975 book by French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age based on historical documents from France. Foucault argues that prison did not become the principal form of punishment just because of the humanitarian concerns of reformists. He traces the cultural shifts that led to the predominance of prison via the body and power. Prison is used by the "disciplines" – new technological powers that can also be found, according to Foucault, in places such as schools, hospitals, and military barracks.

Human security is a paradigm for understanding global vulnerabilities whose proponents challenges the traditional notion of national security through military security by arguing that the proper referent for security should be at the human rather than national level. Human security reveals a people-centred and multi-disciplinary understanding of security which involves a number of research fields, including development studies, international relations, strategic studies, and human rights. The United Nations Development Programme's 1994 Human Development Report is considered a milestone publication in the field of human security, with its argument that ensuring "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear" for all persons is the best path to tackle the problem of global insecurity.

Sociological imagination is a term used in the field of sociology to describe a framework for understanding social reality that places personal experiences within a broader social and historical context.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Political psychology</span> Branch of psychology

Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field, dedicated to understanding politics, politicians and political behavior from a psychological perspective, and psychological processes using socio-political perspectives. The relationship between politics and psychology is considered bidirectional, with psychology being used as a lens for understanding politics and politics being used as a lens for understanding psychology. As an interdisciplinary field, political psychology borrows from a wide range of disciplines, including: anthropology, economics, history, international relations, journalism, media, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology.

<i>Panopticon</i> (album) 2004 studio album by ISIS

Panopticon is the third full-length album by Los Angeles, California based post-metal band ISIS, released by Ipecac Recordings in 2004. The album's title is derived from philosopher Jeremy Bentham's panopticon prison ideal and philosopher/historian Michel Foucault's later allegorical appropriation of the concept. The liner notes also include quotes from technology writer Howard Rheingold and futurist Alex Steffen; as a concept album, Panopticon's focus is on the proliferation of surveillance technologies throughout modern society and the government's role in that spread.

In international relations, constructivism is a social theory that asserts that significant aspects of international relations are shaped by ideational factors. The most important ideational factors are those that are collectively held; these collectively held beliefs construct the interests and identities of actors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Lyon (sociologist)</span> Retired Scottish sociologist

David Lyon is a retired Scottish sociologist who directed the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He previously held a Queen’s Research Chair position and appointments in the Department of Sociology and the Faculty of Law at Queen's University.

Didier Bigo is a French academic from Lille and Professor of International Relations at King's College London and at Sciences Po, Paris. He has authored two books, Polices en réseaux. L'expérience européenne (1996) and Pouvoir et obéissance en Centrafrique (1988) and has been the editor for many others.

International Political Sociology is a peer-reviewed academic journal. Its aim is to publish and disseminate world-leading research that critically explores the problems of the modern international. It welcomes analyses of local, global and international transformations that challenge statist understandings of our world, and encourages research that creatively re-works the constitutive dichotomies holding our world together. It also seeks to develop the already established connections between International Relations (IR), Politics and Sociology by fostering transdisciplinary collaborations between scholars in other disciplines who are critically interrogating the international sphere. Finally, it seeks to broaden the community that engages with international studies beyond the usual circuits of North American and European scholarship so as to better reflect the diverse populations constituting the global realm.

International Political Sociology (IPS) is an interdisciplinary field and set of approaches at the crossroads of international relations theory and other disciplines such as sociology, geography and anthropology. It is structured around initiatives such as the journal International Political Sociology and the network Doingips, as well as scholars such as Didier Bigo, Anastassia Tsoukala, Ayse Ceyhan or Elspeth Guild.

R. B. J. "Rob" Walker is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, Canada, and PUC-Rio. He is the founding co-editor, with Didier Bigo, of the journal International Political Sociology, and long-term editor of the journal Alternatives: Global, Local, Political. With his colleague Warren Magnusson, he is a founding member of UVIC's interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Cultural, Social and Political Thought. His work, while critical of international relations and political theory disciplines, addresses a broad range of problematics bound up with practices and theories of spatiotemporality, boundaries, and sovereignties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criminology</span> The study of crime and criminal actions/behavior

Criminology is the interdisciplinary study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is a multidisciplinary field in both the behavioural and social sciences, which draws primarily upon the research of sociologists, political scientists, economists, psychologists, philosophers, psychiatrists, social workers, biologists, social anthropologists, as well as scholars of law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Surveillance issues in smart cities</span>

Smart cities seek to implement information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve the efficiency and sustainability of urban spaces while reducing costs and resource consumption. In the context of surveillance, smart cities monitor citizens through strategically placed sensors around the urban landscape, which collect data regarding many different factors of urban living. From these sensors, data is transmitted, aggregated, and analyzed by governments and other local authorities to extrapolate information about the challenges the city faces in sectors such as crime prevention, traffic management, energy use and waste reduction. This serves to facilitate better urban planning and allows governments to tailor their services to the local population.

BigoLive is a live streaming platform owned by a Singapore-based Bigo Technology, which was founded in 2014 by David Li and Jason Hu. As of 2019, Bigo Technology is owned by JOYY, a Chinese company listed on the NASDAQ.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hyper-surveillance</span> Form of surveillance

Hyper surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens that specifically utilizes technology and security breaches to access information. As the reliance on the internet economy grows, smarter technology with higher surveillance concerns and snooping means workers to have increased surveillance at their workplace. Hyper surveillance is highly targeted and intricate observation and monitoring among an individual, group of people, or faction.

References

  1. Karin M. Fierke, (2007), Critical approaches to international security, Cambridge, Polity Press, p. 183
  2. Bigo, Didier (2006), "Security, Exception, Ban and Surveillance.", in Lyon, David (ed.), Theorizing Surveillance. The panopticon and beyond., Wilan Publishing, pp. 46–47, ISBN   978-1843921912
  3. Lebbe, Charlotte. "The Ban – Opticon in the Schengen Area. The Ambivalent Meaning of Mobility". open!. Retrieved 16 January 2018.