Organizing Space: Subjectivity and the Surveillant Assemblage

Abstract

We consider the relationship between organizational surveillance and the subjectivity of actors in and around organizations. Surveillance is presented as an ‘assemblage’ of techniques and practices that are productive of subjectivity and we analyse this productivity in terms of the interaction of an ‘objective gaze’ and a ‘subjective gaze’, each of which can emanate from without or without the boundaries of an organization. We identify four types of assemblage—the God’s-Eye View, the Proto-Panopticon, the Panopticon, and the Synopticon—as particular configurations of the objective gaze and subjective gaze that can produce characteristic social spaces of organizational surveillance through th..