Superfluity and insecurity: Disciplining surplus populations in the Global North

Abstract

Capitalism in northern societies is entering an age of advanced precarity. On the one hand, postindustrial societies are confronted by growing surplus populations for whom there exist few positive functions in the market. These new ‘dangerous classes’ are increasingly subject to surveillance, discipline, and exclusion as the policing and penal instruments of the state are called upon to detect and contain risk. On the other hand, capitalism’s ‘insiders’ are increasingly consigned to a precarious life of hyperflexible labor and generalized insecurity. Confronted with a growing mass of ‘social detritus’, augmented by advances in automation and catalyzed by accelerating flows of capital, states in the Global North will increasingly be forced to mobilize the disciplinary instruments of policing and punishment to contain the swelling ranks of problem populations.