`I'll be Watching You': Comment on Sewell and Wilkinson

Abstract

Sewell and Wilkinson (1992) argue that Just-in-Time and Total Quality Control systems are being established in the labour process so that employees can be controlled in the most efficient manner with a minimum of supervisors. Here it is argued that this is but one part of much wider processes which may appear to bring decentralisation while in fact increasingly centralising power. The broader political and cultural contexts and the historical roots of surveillance are reviewed and conceptualised as a movement from Taylorism to Social Taylorism. The development of corporate capitalism and the nation state introduces routine and systematic surveillance, increasingly of an electronic kind, the better to plan and control relationships. The concept of an `electronic panopticon' is an appropriate way of understanding recent manifestations of this long term trend.