Data for Sale: Capitalism and the Surveillance Economy

Catalog description

Surveillance, the practice of tracking and recording information about people, is central to modern capitalist societies. Capitalists rely on surveillance systems to supervise workers and managers, identify customer markets, keep accounts, and calculate the risk of investments and innovations. While such practices can increase profits, they also pose threats for privacy and individual freedom. This course explores the relationship between capitalism and surveillance, and considers the role of surveillance as a mode of economic world-building and social control in the past and present.