This paper examines the problematic of embodied resistance to biometric surveillance practices. After establishing that surveillance is becoming more widespread, the paper draws on the multidisciplinary areas of organization theory, surveillance theory, and body and feminist sociology. It is argued that current theoretical resources available to organization theorists are inadequate for analysing resistance to these technologies. After an investigation of recent developments in the sociology of the body and in surveillance theory, resistance is conceptualized at the interface of bodies and technologies, and is antagonistic towards categorizations and fixities produced by biometrics. A number of resistance strategies are distilled, using feminist and post-structuralist sociology. Although it is acknowledged that the paper’s arguments do not address questions of agency and an ethics of the self, resistance arguments that challenge the totalizing impulse of surveillance practice are welcome in the face of government and private sector rhetoric about its desirability.
Ball, K. S. (2002) ‘Elements of Surveillance: A New Framework and Future Research Direction’ , Information, Communication and Society5(4): 573-590 .
2.
Barker, J. (1993) ‘Tightening the Iron Cage: Concertive Control in Self-Managing Work Teams’ , Administrative Science Quarterly38: 408-437 .
3.
Bell, V. (1999) Feminist Imagination. London: Sage .
4.
Bogard, W. (1996) The Simulation of Surveillance: Hypercontrol in Telematic Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
5.
Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
6.
Bourdieu, P. (1990) The Logic of Practice, trans. R. Nice. Cambridge: Polity Press .
7.
Boyne, R. (2000) ‘Post Panopticism’ , Economy and Society29(2): 285 .
8.
Braverman, H. (1974) Labour and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press .
9.
Burkitt, I. (1999) Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity. London: Sage .
10.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge .
11.
Callon, M. (1991) ‘Techno-economic Networks and Irreversibility’, in J. Law (ed.) A Sociology of Monsters, pp. 132-164. London: Routledge .
12.
Clegg, S. (1994) ‘Power Relations and the Constitution of the Resistant Subject’, in J. M. Jermier , D. Knights and W. R. Nord (eds) Resistance and Power in Organizations. London: Routledge .
13.
Crossley, N. (1995) ‘Merleau Ponty, the Illusive Body and Carnal Sociology’ , Body and Society1(1): 43-63 .
14.
Crossley, N. (2001) The Social Body: Habit, Identity and Desire. London: Sage .
15.
Deleuze, G. and Guatarri, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press .
16.
Elias, N. (1991) The Symbol Theory. London: Sage .
17.
Foucault, M. (1976) The History of Sexuality, vol. 1. Harmondsworth: Penguin .
18.
Foucault, M. (1980) ‘Body/Power’, in C. Gordon (ed.) Michel Foucault: Power/Knowledge. Brighton: Harvester .
19.
Gandy, O. (1998) ‘Coming to Terms with the Panoptic Sort’, in D. Lyon and E. Zureik (eds) Computers, Surveillance and Privacy. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press .
20.
Gatens, M. (1996) Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. London: Routledge .
21.
Gibson, M. (2001) ‘The Truth Machine: Polygraphs, Popular Culture and the Confessing Body’ , Social Semiotics11(1): 61-73 .
22.
Goffman, E. (1963) Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: Free Press .
23.
Goffman, E. (1971) Relations in Public. Harmondsworth: Penguin .
24.
Grosz, E. (1994) Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press .
25.
Haggerty, K. D. and Ericson, R. V. (2000) ‘The Surveillant Assemblage’ , British Journal of Sociology51(4): 605-622 .
26.
Haraway, D. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books .
27.
Hayles, N. K. (1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .
28.
Hier, S. (2003) ‘Probing the Surveillance Assemblage: On the Dialectics of Surveillance Practices as Process of Social Control’ , Surveillance and Society1(3): 399-411 .
29.
Howson, A. and Inglis, D. (2001) ‘The Body in Sociology: Tensions inside and outside Sociological Thought’ , Sociological Review49(3): 297-317 .
30.
Irigaray, L. (1985) Speculum of the Other Woman, transl. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press .
31.
Jackson, S. and Scott, S. (1996) Women and Sexuality: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press .
32.
Jermier, J. (1988) ‘Sabotage at Work: The Rational View’, in Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press .
33.
Knights, D. (1992) ‘Subjectivity, Power and the Labour Process’, in D. Knights and H. Willmott (eds) Labour Process Theory. London: Macmillan .
34.
Leigh-Starr, S. (1991) ‘Power, Technologies and the Phenomenology of Conventions: On Being Allergic to Onions’, in J. Law (ed.) A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London: Routledge .
35.
Longhurst, R. (2001) Bodies: Exploring Fluid Boundaries. London: Routledge .
36.
Lyon, D. (2001) Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life. Milton Keynes: Open University Press .
37.
McCahill, M. and Norris, C. (1999) ‘Watching the Workers: Crime, CCTV and the Workplace’, in P. Davis , P. Francis and V. Jupp (eds) Invisible Crimes: Their Victims and Their Regulation, pp. 208-231. London: Macmillan .
38.
McDowell, L. (1997) Capital Culture: Gender at Work. Oxford: Blackwell .
39.
McNay, L. (1999) ‘Gender, Habitus and the Field: Pierre Bourdieu and the Limits of Reflexivity Theory’ , Culture and Society16(1): 95-117 .
40.
Marx, G. T. (1987) ‘Raising Your Hand Just Won’t Do’ , Los Angeles Times, 1 April.
41.
Marx, G. T. (1990) ‘The Case of the Omniscient Organization’ , Harvard Business Review, March-April: 4-12 .
42.
Marx, G. T. (1999) ‘Measuring Everything That Moves: The New Surveillance at Work’, in I. andR. Simpson (eds) The Workplace and Deviance, JAI series on Research in the Sociology of Work. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press .
43.
Michael, M. (1996) Constructing Identities. London: Sage .
44.
Prasad, A. and Prasad, P. (2001) ‘(Un)Willing to Resist? The Discursive Production of Local Workplace Opposition’ , Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies7: 105-125 .
45.
Regan, P. (1998) ‘Genetic Testing and Workplace Surveillance: Implications for Privacy’, in D. Lyon and E. Zureik (eds) Computers, Surveillance and Privacy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press .
46.
Rule, J. (1998) ‘High-tech Workplace Surveillance: What’s Really New?’, in D. Lyon and E. Zureik (eds) Computers, Surveillance and Privacy. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press .
47.
Sewell, G. (1998) ‘The Discipline of Teams: The Control of Team-based Industrial Work through Electronic and Peer Surveillance’ , Administrative Science Quarterly43(2): 397-428 .
48.
Sewell, G. and Wilkinson, B. (1992) ‘Someone to Watch over Me: Surveillance and Discipline and the JIT Labour Process’ , Sociology26(2): 271 .
49.
Shilling, C. (1993) The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage .
50.
Spivak, G. (1990) The Post-Colonial Critic. London: Routledge .
51.
Stewart, W. S. (1941) ‘How to Beat the Lie Detector’ , Esquire, November; available at < http://antipolygraph.org/articles/article-034.shtml > (accessed 26 August 2004).
52.
Turner, B. S. (1984) The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell .
53.
Turner, B. S. (1992) ‘Recent Developments in the Theory of the Body’, in M. Featherstone , M. Hepworth and B. Turner (eds) The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory. London: Sage .
54.
Van der Ploeg, I. (2002) ‘Biometrics and the Body as Information: Normative Issues of the Socio-technical Coding of the Body’, in D. Lyon (ed.) Surveillance as Social Sorting, London: Routledge .
55.
Witz, A. (2000) ‘Whose Body Matters: Sociology and the Corporeal Turn in Sociology and Feminism’ , Body and Society6(2): 1-24 .
56.
Wood, D. , Konvitz, E. and Ball, K. (2003) ‘The Constant State of Emergency’, in K. Ball and F. Webster (eds) The Intensification of Surveillance: Crime, Terrorism and Warfare in the Information Era. London: Pluto Press .
