Organization, Surveillance and the Body: Towards a Politics of Resistance

TLDR

Surveillance is increasingly widespread, prompting analysis through organization theory, surveillance theory, and body/feminist sociology. The paper investigates embodied resistance to biometric surveillance practices. The authors conceptualize resistance at the interface of bodies and biometric technologies, drawing on feminist and post‑structuralist sociology to distill multiple resistance strategies. The study finds that existing organization‑theory resources are insufficient to analyze resistance to biometric surveillance, yet offers arguments that challenge surveillance’s totalizing impulse.

Abstract

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.