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The purpose of this paper is to investigate a dystopian situation with special reference to how a panoptic monitoring system emerges in schools. To satisfy this aim, there will be a close analysis of the city of Nago in Okinawa Prefecture, where there is a huge debate over the new US Marine base construction and how it greatly influences people’s lives.

This study will employ a self-study by the first author, who is a clinical psychologist under the board of education in the city. This self-study aims to examine the lived experiences of the author based on interactions with critical friends.

The government’s selection of the site for the new base created a schism in the community, and the introduction of compensations led to the establishment of a communal panoptic monitoring system. This communal panoptic monitoring largely influences the relationships between pupils, teachers and parents. Further, another panoptic monitoring system has developed inside the Nago schools due to the intensification of the assessment policies given by the ministry in Tokyo.

This investigation purports to analyse a dystopian situation with special reference to how a panoptic monitoring system, a key element of a dystopia, emerges in schools.

The chapter critically analyzes the concepts and the practices of surveillance in modern and postmodern societies along with their consequences. We show the changes in the systems, which are used to monitor individuals, and emphasize the transition toward soft surveillance systems, probably stimulated by digital technologies. This switch from top-down control to “lateral” monitoring systems encloses surveillance practices with suggestive names like interveillance, synopticon, and dataveillance. The dark side of digital health has a bright start. According to Topol’s (2016) vision of the future, we will soon be the “consumers,” the real protagonists, of the management of our health – thanks largely to the practically endless data about our bodies, behaviors, and lifestyles we will be able to collect and analyze. We will share our health information in real time with the doctors whom we will choose based on their score in clinical rankings (here, too, quantification rears its head). Yet, this simplified version of health makes it seem that there are always some solutions, which the algorithm can supply as long as it has enough information. Moreover, in the United States, some health-insurance companies have started to offer a discount on premiums to the members who agree to collect and share self-tracking data with them. Clearly, the discount is given only to the workers who have healthy habits. At first sight, this can seem as a win-win trade-off; however, what today is presented as an individual option can easily become a requirement tomorrow.

Surveillance studies scholars have embraced Foucault's panopticon as a central metaphor in their analysis of online monitoring technologies, despite several architectural incompatibilities between eighteenth and nineteenth century prisons and twenty-first century computer networks. I highlight a number of Internet features that highlight the limits of the electronic panopticon. I examine two trends that have been considerably underestimated by surveillance scholars: (1) the democratization of surveillance, where the distributed structure of the Internet and the availability of observation technologies has blurred the distinction between those who watch and those who are being watched, allowing individuals or marginalized groups to deploy sophisticated surveillance technologies against the state or large corporations; and (2) the resistance strategies that Internet users are adopting to curb the surveillance of their online activities, through blocking moves such as the use of cryptography, or masking moves that are designed to feed meaningless data to monitoring tools. I conclude that these two trends are neglected by a majority of surveillance scholars because of biases that make them dismiss the initiative displayed by ordinary users, assess positive and negative outcomes differently, and confuse what is possible and what is probable.

Public video surveillance tends to be discussed in either utopian or dystopian terms: proponents maintain that camera surveillance is the perfect tool in the fight against crime, while critics argue that the use of security cameras is central to the development of a panoptic, Orwellian surveillance society. This paper provides an alternative, more nuanced view. On the basis of an empirical case study, the paper explores how camera surveillance applications do not simply augment surveillance capacities, but rather have to deal with considerable uncertainties in the process of producing a continuous, effective, all‐seeing gaze. The case study shows that the actions of human operators and the operation of camera technologies each place limits on the execution of electronic visual surveillance, instead of efficiently enhancing the powers of the surveilling gaze. The analysis suggests that the effects of video surveillance are rather ambivalent and uncertain, thus showing that public camera systems are not simply beneficial or malign.

This paper aims to clarify the apparent confusion on the work impacts of business process re‐engineering (BPR), specifically, the level of empowerment and work monitoring, through the conceptual lens of Panopticon.

An intensive case study at the Singapore Internal Revenue Services was conducted. Ninety‐nine employees were also surveyed on their perceived empowerment and work‐monitoring pre‐ and post‐BPR.

The findings revealed intense work monitoring in the post‐BPR environment. For the redesign of routine processes, tighter work monitoring is coupled with continuous efforts to formalize behaviors, leaving little need or scope for real empowerment. Greater empowerment is evident only in the redesign of non‐routine processes, through a Panopticon‐like combination of greater empowerment and higher work monitoring.

The research suggests the applicability of Panopticon as a conceptual lens in understanding and reconciling the apparent contradictions greater empowerment and heightened work monitoring in reengineered workplace. It suggests the need for future research to begin bridging the disparate empowerment and control literature.

The study shows practitioners how they can leverage the discipline of visibility to orchestrate control creatively in a reengineered environment. The glimpses of post‐BPR workplace also help managers to better anticipate change management issues.

The paper addresses an important issue of BPR work impacts. Its suggestion of Panopticon as a conceptual lens also provides a refreshing look at the traditional issues in BPR.

This study seeks to synthesize theories from communication, psychology and criminology to examine the factors that influence the two most popular topics in industry – internet abuse and addiction at the workplace.

The survey results of 351 responses were analyzed to test the proposed hypotheses and research model using structural equation modeling. Data were collected in Southern Science Park in Taiwan.

It was found that personality factors such as locus of control and self‐esteem significantly influence employees' internet addictions; and internet addiction significantly impacts employees' internet abuse at the workplace.

Employers should pay special attention to employees' personalities because they play important roles in internet addiction and internet abuse. Also a good internet policy will be useful especially to a panoptic working environment, which is becoming popular.

This study provides a comprehensive theoretical foundation to better understand the two controversial issues in industry. The empirical study validates the important theories of locus of control, self‐esteem, use and gratification, control, and containment in workplace surveillance and deviant behavior research.

Organizations and their actors are increasingly using video surveillance to monitor organizational members, employees, clients, and customers. The use of such technologies in workplaces creates a virtual panopticon and increases uncertainty for those under surveillance. Video surveillance in organizations poses several concerns for the privacy of individuals and creates a security-privacy dilemma for organizations to address. The purpose of this paper is to offer a decision-making model that ties in ethical considerations of access, equality, and transparency at four stages of video surveillance use in organizations: deployment of cameras and equipment, capturing footage, processing and storing data, and editing and sharing video footage. At each stage, organizational actors should clearly identify the purpose for video surveillance, adopt a minimum capability necessary to achieve their goals, and communicate decisions made and actions taken that involve video surveillance in order to reduce uncertainty and address privacy concerns of those being surveilled.

The paper proposes a normative model for ethical video surveillance organizational decision making based on a review of relevant literature and recent events.

The paper provides several implications for the future of dealing with security-privacy dilemmas in organizations and offers structured considerations for corporation leaders and decision makers.

The paper includes implications for organizations to approach video surveillance with ethical considerations for stakeholder privacy while balancing security demands.

This paper offers a framework for decision-makers that also offers opportunities for further research around the concept of ethics in organizational video surveillance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the language utilised in Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) in Scottish public libraries. Through this examination the paper aims to ascertain if power relationships between local authorities, public libraries and users are apparent. Finally, the paper aims to determine if Foucault’s theory of panopticism is relevant to public libraries in this context.

The paper analyses all 32 of the AUPs used in Scottish public libraries, applying a Foucaldian discourse analysis to the content of the policies.

By thorough examination of the literature the researchers were able to extract ten key features that ought to appear in an AUP. It was found that only one of 32 local authorities included information relating to all of these features. It was also found that one local authority contained as few as four of these key features. The median number of features included in the policies was seven. It was also found that power relationships are evident and can be perceived throughout the AUPs. By identifying the key Foucauldian themes of discipline, surveillance, knowledge, and power and resistance throughout the AUPs, the researchers were able to analyse and identify the existence of power relationships and consider the implications these could have on users and on the library services being provided.

The study examines one geographic region, and is only indicative of the region concerned. In addition the usage of the qualitative methodology utilised could be deemed to have elements of subjectivity.

The study would be of benefit to researchers and professionals interested in issues around AUPs and surveillance of library users.

The use of Foucaldian discourse analysis is limited in library and information science research, and this study helps fill this gap. It is the first study the researchers have found that critically examines a range of public library AUPs.

This chapter demonstrates that while in most late modern societies there is a neoliberal hegemony to expand police Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) surveillance for crime control and antiterrorism, in Greece there is serious controversy and resistance against the post-Olympic use of more than 1,200 Olympic CCTV cameras. Drawing on the interesting politics of CCTV expansion and resistance, the chapter traces the reasons why, in the Greek context, this very expensive Olympic surveillance “dowry” has been opposed, even for traffic control. It critically attributes Greek citizens’ fear and mistrust primarily to their past police-state experience of authoritarian, thought-control surveillance.

Service work is often differentiated from manufacturing by the interactive labor workers perform as they come into direct contact with customers. Service organizations are particularly interested in regulating these interactions because they are a key opportunity for developing quality customer service, customer retention, and ultimately generation of sales revenue. An important stream of sociological literature focuses on managerial attempts to exert control over interactions through various techniques including routinization, standardization, and surveillance. Scripting is a common method of directing workers’ behavior, yet studies show that workers are extremely reluctant to administer scripts, judging them to be inappropriate to particular interactions or because they undermine their own sense of self. This paper examines a panoptic method of regulating service workers, embodied in undercover corporate agents who patrol employee’s adherence to scripts. How do workers required to recite scripts for customers respond to undercover control? What does it reveal about the nature of interactive labor? In-depth interviews with interactive workers in a range of retail contexts reveal that they mobilize their own interactional competence to challenge the effects of the panoptic, as they utilize strategies to identify and adapt to these “mystery shoppers,” all the while maintaining their cover. The paper shows the limits on control of interactive workers, as they maintain their own socialized sense of civility and preserve a limited realm of autonomy in their work.